Synopsis

While rummaging through the attic, high school senior, Jack Davies, is surprised to find his never-before-seen birth certificate, revealing a startling bit of information that changes his life. The story his mother told about his birth, he discovers, is revealed to be a lie, shattering long-held beliefs and the trust he had for her. Jack becomes obsessed with discovering the truth, leading him down a dangerous path. Faced with unanswered questions and confounding obstacles at every turn, Jack finds himself deeply enmeshed in an intricate world of national security and international intrigue. Relationships are tested as his every move is tracked by a group of mysterious people. Who are they? Whose side are they on? Who can he trust? And, most importantly, who will he ultimately become?

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Review

This debut novel combines a young man coming to grips that he does have a father with a little bit of intrigue and government spies.

Jack stumbles across his birth certificate and realizes his father does have a name. This sets him off on the path to find his father without tipping off his mother since she has told him all his life that she didn’t know his father. He is an enterprising young man and I was amazed at the amount of research that he did and how he was able to find places to go on the internet to find clues about his father. He meets a young woman, Cathy, at the university where his father attended and she becomes an accomplice in his search for his father since she is able to get him some information about his father, but most of it has been wiped out at the university.

This book has multiple storylines and jumps between the past and the present. It added dimension to the story to learn about how Linda and Stewart met and what they both might have gone through during that time and what led Linda to make the decisions she did for her and Jack. There is a fair amount of technical information regarding what Tom (Stewart’s new alias) is doing in Europe in the oil industry and trying to discover new methods to obtain oil from the seas. He runs into an old college friend that assists him in his endeavors in Saudi Arabia but has some own tragedies he deals with in this book. I don’t want to give away too much because one of these events plays a large role in how events unfold.

I have mixed feelings about Jack and his attitude. Part of me believes he is still immature for his age (18-20) but at the same time, he discovers a passion he didn’t know he had until Cathy points it out to him. His discussions/fights with his mother once she confirms she does know his father seem stilted. I can understand his anger at not being told the truth, but at the same time, he isn’t honest with her when he learned the truth that one day in the attic.  Linda did what she thought was right at the time and maybe knowing facts now she might have made other choices, but as they say, hindsight is 20/20. It takes Cathy and Stewart to point out the facts before Jack can see them clearly. He is very absorbed in how he feels without taking others into consideration. This feels pretty normal for a person that age.

The one thing I would have liked to have seen done in the formatting of this book was to put some sort of break when jumping storylines or timelines. I would read along in the chapter and then all of a sudden we were somewhere else or in the past. This was a little disconcerting because I had no warning and had to shift gears in my brain.

Overall this was a good book for a debut novel with multiple layers, varied plot lines, and complex characters. We give it 3 paws up.

About the Author

Barry Eisenberg is the author of Primal Calling, his debut novel. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, among others. An associate professor of health care management in the School for Graduate Studies at the State University of New York Empire State College, he is also a health care management consultant and a former hospital administrator. An avid bicycle rider, Eisenberg lives in New Jersey with his wife, Amy.

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