Sins of Our Fathers
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist: A “wonderfully vivid” crime novel about race, money, and the American Dream (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
A banker in small-town Minnesota, J.W. has been caught embezzling funds to support his gambling addiction. He’s on the verge of losing everything when his boss offers him a scoundrel's path to redemption: sabotage a competing, Native banker named Johnny Eagle. A single father, Eagle recently returned to the reservation, leaving a high-powered job in the hope of simultaneously empowering his community and saving his troubled son.
When J.W. moves onto the reservation and begins to work his way close to Eagle, hundreds of years of racial animosities rise to the surface, inexorably driving the characters toward a Shakespearean and shattering conclusion, in this elegant, page-turning novel by the screenwriter of the Oscar-nominated House of Sand and Fog.
“A rousing and satisfying climax. Otto’s wonderfully vivid debut narrative is reminiscent of well-known crime novelist William Kent Krueger.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Captivating from the first page.”—The Missourian
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This stylish novel from film and TV writer/producer Otto (author of the nonfiction book Fool Me Twice) concerns J.W., a smalltown bank president whose gambling addiction causes his life to spiral out of control. One year after his son Chris's dies in an auto crash while driving stoned, J.W. abandons his harried wife, Carol, and his teenaged daughter, Julie. When J.W.'s embezzlement of bank funds to cover his betting losses is uncovered, his boss fires him and then coerces him into spying on the local competition. J.W. relocates to live in a trailer and spies on Johnny Eagle, who is establishing a new tribal bank on the Ojibwe reservation. J.W. befriends Johnny's surly teenaged son, Jacob, takes a menial job bagging rice, and begins a romance with Johnny's alcoholic sister-in-law, Mona. J.W.'s situation resolves in a rousing and satisfying climax. Otto's wonderfully vivid debut narrative is reminiscent of well-known crime novelist William Kent Krueger.