His Old Man

Charlie Davis has spent his entire life trying to outrun silence.In the early 70s, Charlie drifts through the South doing whatever work he can find—construction, fishing boats, treasure hunting in the Florida Keys—until the death of his father pulls him back home to Tennessee. There, he reconnects with Mary Collins, the fiery redhead he never quite forgot. Within a year, they are married, raising two children, and building a life together out of long workdays, cheap beer, fishing trips, and the fragile hope that love alone can hold a family together.For a while, it does.But life keeps coming for them. Mary survives cancer. Charlie spends years working out of state to provide for the family, slowly becoming a stranger inside his own home. Their daughter Andrea—bright, stubborn, and full of promise—is forever changed after a violent assault in college. Though she survives, the trauma follows her home, quietly unraveling her life through addiction and self-destruction while her parents struggle helplessly to save her.When Andrea dies years later from an overdose, the loss fractures the family beyond repair. Charlie turns to alcohol to bury his guilt, Mary retreats inward beneath the weight of grief, and their son Matthew begins repeating the same patterns that destroyed his father. Even as a granddaughter brings moments of light back into Charlie's world, he finds himself haunted by regret, loneliness, and the growing realization that love is not always enough to save the people we care about most.Told across decades of American life—from post-Vietnam Florida docks and rural Tennessee backroads to hospital rooms, fishing boats, bars, and front porches—‘His Old Man,' is a multi-generational literary family drama complete at approximately 43,800 words. The novel explores masculinity, addiction, grief, generational trauma, and the quiet ways ordinary people fail and forgive each other over the course of a lifetime. Read more