The Golden Boy
A Novel
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A 2026 BARNES & NOBLE DISCOVER PRIZE FINALIST
An extraordinary and deeply satisfying story about love, betrayal, mercy, and second chances—for readers of Elizabeth Strout and Ann Napolitano
When Stafford Hopkins loses his high-profile job in network television, his American colleagues rejoice. Canadian-born, his disdain for the industry has outrun his success, and few mourn his departure. His mercurial American wife in tow, he retreats to their luxury estate on Maui where he does what he has always done best―he rewrites the past. But a year into their exile, Stafford’s defenses are crumbling, and when a letter arrives with a request from the dead to do something for the living, he is summoned home to a farm, a lake, a prison, and a dance hall where the spirit of a boy named Bobby Shepherd is waiting for him.
“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
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A disgraced TV executive and his wife retire to Maui, where their life of leisure is interrupted by news that they've been named guardians to a late friend's four grandchildren, in ghostwriter Finn's uneven debut. The first third focuses on the couple as they fumble around and bicker in the wake of 58-year-old Stafford Hopkins's forced retirement (the reasons for his ouster are vaguely explained later). When a letter from a lawyer informs him that he has been named guardian for the four grandchildren of his childhood best friend, Bobby Shepherd, who died in an accident when they were teens and Bobby's girlfriend was pregnant, he's flooded with memories. Agnes protests, given that their first run at parenting resulted in a strained relationship with their daughter, and Stafford agrees, but he travels back to his small Canadian hometown to set up a fund for the children. Interspersed with his return are long flashbacks to his upbringing, including his idyllic boyhood with Bobby and their falling-out when they were teens. 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.
