Favorite Sons: A Novel

Description

Narrator of Favorite Sons Hutch Van Buren is fifteen years old, playing sports and searching for arrowheads in a small industrial town in Ohio with his three closest friends when an altercation between the comrades and Petey Sanchez, a troubled seventeen- year-old, leads to Petey's accidental death. Together, Hutch and his friends become ensnared in a web of secrets and moral dilemmas. A local ne'er-do-well goes to jail for the crime while the boys keep their pact of silence. Each boy shoulders the burden of truth in his own way as each attempts to leave the past behind. Thirty-three years later, in 2004, Van Buren is the prosecuting attorney in Summit County, Ohio, and a candidate for state attorney general when he learns that he and his boyhood friends weren't the only ones keeping a secret about Petey's death. A convicted sex offender in need of a favor attempts to blackmail Van Buren in return for his silence. Van Buren must decide between his political career and the duty of the office he has sworn to uphold. With the clock ticking, Van Buren has a week to seek out his boyhood friends and search his soul while he sorts out three decades of deceit he helped create. Favorite Sons is a wonderful, suspenseful novel with nuanced, memorable characters and unpredictable plot twists.

An award-winning former crime reporter with the Columbus Dispatch, Robin Yocum has published two true crime books and five critically acclaimed novels. A Brilliant Death was a finalist for both the 2017 Edgar and the Silver Falchion for best adult mystery. Favorite Sons was named the 2011 Book of the Year for Mystery/Suspense by USA Book News. His short story, The Last Hit, was selected for Best American Mystery Stories 2020. He grew up in the Ohio River village of Brilliant and is a graduate of Bowling Green State University, where he received a degree in journalism, which kept him out of the steel mills and prevented an untimely and fiery death.

Favorite Sons is a riveting novel in which friendships are pitted against truth with dead-on dialog and unforgettable characters. Yocum s debut fiction novel is a fresh, fast-paced story that explores a sharply etched world of intrigue, friendship, politics, and, ultimately, the weight of truth. It 's rare to find a book that doesn t fail on some level, but this is one I read without a hint of disappointment. Favorite Sons keeps the reader turning pages with its twisted plot and characters facing high stakes. It s rare to find a book that doesn t fail on some level, but this is one I read without a hint of disappointment. This is a seething mass of moral turpitude, opportunistic extortion and endemic corruption. What a tasty debut novel it is. Favorite Sons isa riveting novel in which friendships are pitted against truth with dead-ondialog and unforgettable characters. Yocum s debut fiction novel is a fresh, fast-paced story that explores a sharply etched world of intrigue, friendship, politics, and, ultimately, the weight of truth. Favorite Sonskeeps the reader turning pages with its twisted plot and characters facing highstakes. It s rare to find a book that doesn t fail onsome level, but this is one I read without a hint of disappointment. This is a seething mass of moralturpitude, opportunistic extortion and endemic corruption. What a tasty debut novel it is.