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by Patricia Finn
An unexpected letter sends a man and his wife into their pasts—and offers them both a shot at redemption.
After an involuntary retirement from his high-flying Hollywood career, Stafford Hopkins has retreated to a luxury estate on Maui, along with his wife Agnes, both grimly resigned to life in a paradise where neither feels fully at home.
Stafford is ready to retreat into himself, too, when a letter arrives with shocking news. Stafford has been named guardian of four children he didn't know existed: the grandchildren of his late childhood friend, Bobby Shepherd, whose ghost Stafford can no longer ignore.
Returning to both the hardscrabble farming town and the dark secret he'd tried to forget for decades, Stafford is forced to confront his past in order to rebuild his future—and to redirect the fates of his family and the four young people suddenly in his care.
Slyly funny and deeply moving, The Golden Boy is a captivating debut about love, mercy, and second chances.
"A tale of second chances delivered with wit and heart." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Finn crafts a convincing depiction of an aging married couple, who feel overwhelmed by the effort it would take 'to undo the many years of battering and need that had replaced love,' but the listless plotting and delayed revelations wear thin. This one doesn't quite hang together." —Publishers Weekly
"With The Golden Boy, Patricia Finn has constructed something miraculous – an immersive, profoundly moving story about friendship, marriage, betrayal, and redemption that spans across generations and oceans. She writes with a philosopher's deep wisdom, and a screenwriter's talent for satisfyingly messy characters and wholly gripping plots. Combine all of that with the fact that The Golden Boy is also very, very funny, and what you've got is a novel that's about as perfect as they come." ―Grant Ginder, author of The People We Hate at the Wedding
"Extraordinary. The Golden Boy is both a love story and a family drama, where the past gives purpose to the present action. I can't recall ever reading such a satisfying ending... nor cheering for characters more enthusiastically." ―Elin Hilderbrand, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Swan Song and The Perfect Couple
This information about The Golden Boy was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Patricia Finn is a writer, ghostwriter, editor, and consultant who has worked in various capacities on non-fiction, episodic television and feature films, including adaptions of original material from Alice Munro and Carol Shields amongst others. She completed post-graduate work in English and Classics with a focus on Aristotle and Athenian tragedy. She has both Canadian and American roots and now lives in Vancouver.
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