Craig Lancaster | The Summer Son

Published: May 10, 2011

The tensions that often exist between fathers and sons are a timeless topic, ripe for many stories. Billings author Craig Lancaster explores that divide in his deeply emotional second novel.

Mitch Quillen’s middle-class life is unraveling. His marriage is troubled and he’s bored with his job when an unexpected call from his father, from whom he’s been estranged for 30 years, sets him on a course of discovery during their last summer together.

Mitch was still in grade school when his parents separated, and he was forced to spend summers with his boozy, garrulous father, who ran a truck-mounted drilling rig in Utah and Montana. Mitch begins to re-open that painful past, and uncovers clues that help explain his father’s erratic and mean-spirited behavior and reveals events he could hardly imagine.

In heartbreaking detail, Lancaster portrays the good and the bad in his characters, offering the reader reasons to despise, sympathize with, and ultimately understand them. The writing is clear and straightforward, with depth and sincerity, giving broken hearts and damaged souls hope for healing.

“In his second novel, Lancaster writes with deceptive directness, rendering the sensuous world with high-definition precision, from a rattlesnake to a sunset to Jim’s drunken aggression, while slowly revealing the complexity of his damaged characters’ psyches,” writes Booklist.

Lancaster’s first novel, 600 Hours of Edward, received the 2010 High Plains Book Award for best first book. His new novel was published by AmazonEncore, Las Vegas, NV, and sells for $13.95 softcover.

– Judy Shafter