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“Cry Father is strong medicine. It burns going down, but there’s healing in that dose as well. It’s a book that put me in the mind of my own Dad and made me think of my own duties as a father. And any book that can reach inside your heart and mind and force you to reflect on such things is doing something very, very right indeed.” (Craig Davidson, author of Rust and Bone and Cataract City)

It took me awhile between the time I got this book, dedicated by its author, whom I was lucky enough too meet in my own city (in France) and read it. At that time, I had just read his first book, Pike, and was eager to meet him. And trust me, the man is pretty close to his characters, with, ice on the cake, a predatory smile !

Meet Patterson Wells, the guy works as a tree cutter and power line clearer in disastrous zones, all over the U.S  alongside dangerous men. His job keeps him away from his past, the time he had a wife and a son, before the loss of his beloved Justin and the end of his marriage. When he’s not on the roads, Patterson lives in a wooden cabin back in the San Luis Valley, in Colorado. His only friend is his dog, Sancho and his whiskey bottle. His drinking habit gets him in trouble and in fights in the few bars where he tries to drown his pain. His ex-wife, Laney, who had another son after they broke up, shows up one day to ask to him to join her in a civil lawsuit against the hospital – a way for her to keep a watch over her ex-husband, whom she still cares about despite their break-up. As many couples, they have gone through the mourning of their son in a different ways. She chose to live, he didn’t.

Writing to his boy in a diary gives Patterson some solace. He writes to Justin about his pain, about all the things they could have done together, all the things a father could have teach his son : going to base-ball games, hunting, watching movies. By doing this, Patterson says that’s the only way to keep his son alive. If he didn’t tell him these stories, the boy would definitely go away. His letters are beautiful, a cry from the heart – the pain due to the absence, the love of his son still haunting. Since the passing of his boy, Patterson acts like a zombie – the booze, the drugs – he’s turned down any social life – doesn’t see anyone. He’s one of these people, whom pain has become a way of life. He knows his ex-wife is trying to help him, reaching out for him but he can’t grasp her hand. His pain acts like a drug to him. Deep down, he knows he needs to take a turn and change his life.

But one day, he meets Junior, a drug trafficker, a mule whose job is to drive drugs from the Mexican border back to Colorado. Junior is nervous and loves to fight. He loves adrenaline, he loves to drive as fast as possible. Junior has a girlfriend and a little girl of his own. But the girls want to move far away from this place with no future. She keeps telling him about it – she cares about him, and he knows it and Junior can’t change. Won’t change.

Patterson and Junior look alike, their inner violence leads them to their end. They have a complementary nature – and each one provides an outlet for their rage and despair. They soon help each other, both dragging the other one to the bottom.

Benjamin Whitmer has already proved us he can write “Noir” novels, as he did with Pike – but this time, I find his novel more profound and better achieved. Each of his word has been weighed in, counted and when they fall, they kick you down. Whitmer’s prose is raw and spare. No extra words.

“Benjamin Whitmer writes with fearless and savage veracity, beautiful and brutal in equal measure” as I’ve read in an article.

He writes about things you don’t want to read : guilt, violence, shame and yet, there’s still hope in his novel. A tiny one – here interpreted through the two female characters. They symbolize a ray of sunshine in their dark lives. They symbolize love and compassion, and while I was reading – I kept thinking about the mother in the movie Tree of Life – a loving, soft and soothing mother.

A great novel – it confirms all the good I think about the author, who said, during his interview, that if it wasn’t for his kids, he might have chosen the same path as his characters.

 “Benjamin Whitmer’s latest, Cry Father, is a gut punch of raw storytelling power. A novel of fathers and sons, and the constant—and at times emotionally crippling—mistakes both make. Much like Whitmer’s first novel, it is absolutely uncompromising and one of 2014’s must read novels.” (Lit Reactor)