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A Faithful Son is the coming of age tale of a young boy who struggles with his family, his faith, and his sexuality.

The book has been well received. Please check out the reviews of past readers of A Faithful Son for more information.

Happy Reading!

A Faithful Son
by Michael Scott Garvin
https://amzn.com/1519414730

A Faithful Son
Michael Scott Garvin
By the author, 2016
ISBN 13: 9781519414731

Four stars

Sometimes, even unhappiness can’t cut you off from the place that made you.

Michael Scott Garvin has created a memoir-like tale about Zachariah Nance, a farm boy from Durango, Colorado. From his idyllic memories of childhood with his sisters, Laura and Kate, to the uncomfortable adolescence that finds him increasingly alienated from his family and community, the author takes us through Zach’s life. We are offered an intimate view of what it is to be the child of an Evangelical Christian family in the 1950s, a boy whose secrets create a burden so intolerable that the only relief is to leave.

“I was just a stupid kid and didn’t know God picked his favorites like the prettiest flowers from a garden.”

The beauty of Durango and the charms of a simple small-town childhood are contrasted with Zach’s increasing awareness of his difference from his peers, as he struggles to fit in in a way every gay man of a certain generation will accept with painful recognition.

“I grew into a young man who didn’t recognize his own face in the mirror.”

Even as Zach battles his own demons, tragedy shatters the tenuous happiness of his childhood, and through his eyes we watch the aftermath as it affects the lives of his whole family in unalterable ways, defining their individual futures even as tries to imagine what kind of future he might have. So this is a memoir not just about Zach, but about his sister and his parents. Zach’s struggle and pain as he seeks some kind of personal truth becomes inextricably linked to that of those he loves best.

“After all these years, I still wonder why God abandons a man when life gets bent and bruised beyond recognition.”

While the overall time-frame of the story arc takes us from the 1950s to the 1970s – possibly even into the 1980s – the internal chronology of the narrative is often puzzling, and left me confused as to the actual time of different events in Zach’s life. I suppose this is unimportant to most readers, for whom the emotional state of Zach and his family are what matters, and that is depicted with painful clarity.

Ultimately, this is the story about a boy growing up and moving away from a place where he feels profoundly out of synch with the world into which he was born. But it is also, more painfully, about a man who never manages to integrate his past and his present; his happiness and his sorrows. To the very end, Zach Nance is the faithful son of the title, and never quite manages to tie his present and his past into any sort of bearable whole. The rigid conformity of his childhood religious upbringing never allows him to be both who he is and who he was born to be. Even as Zach comes to terms with himself as a gay man, he is never free of constraint. As his devout sister Laura proclaims to him:

“Honesty is a selfish thing, Zach. Nothing good ever comes from it.”

This isn’t a feel-good book. It is a story about emotional survival against the odds, and without any but the most grudging support of those who matter most. From the start of the book, Zach Nance is on his own, and it remains so until the very last page. In one way this makes him heroic, but in another it is simply inexpressibly sad.

thank you for the thoughtful review

So happy!

A Faithful Son is the winner of The Beverly Hills Book Award.

Also, my little novel was mentioned, along with two other fantastic books you should check out this holiday season, on the Big Gay Fiction Podcast > https://youtu.be/jSPZgyWsY8Y (23:50)

Thanks to Lisa with The Novel Approach for speaking so highly of A Faithful Son.

If you are looking for recommended books, please check out the reviews from several different sources from The Novel Approach. Here is the link:

http://www.thenovelapproachreviews.com/

Finally, I have so much to be thankful for this year. I appreciate all of the support and friendships here on Goodreads. May you all have a lovely holiday season.

Sincerely,

Michael Scott Garvin
A Faithful Son
http://www.michaelscottgarvinbooks.com/

On Sale! $ 0.99
Link: http://a.co/0GdmL3A
Michael Scott Garvin

Free from Amazon at the moment. I really liked this book. When I had to put it down to do other things I couldn’t wait to get back to it.

Aussie54 wrote: "Free from Amazon at the moment. I really liked this book. When I had to put it down to do other things I couldn’t wait to get back to it."

You've sold me---I'll give it a go.