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Guess the Plot

Fathers, Sons and Their Holy Ghosts

1. Phil ran away from home to escape his conservative father, and never looked back. Three decades later, Phil's son runs away from home to escape Phil, who has become his own father. Also, the ghosts of murdered people.

2, John Paul's father was the foremost scholar on the Catholic Saints before dying in a plane crash. Now the ghosts of said saints have found him and want him to set his father's speculative research straight.

3. When a parallel universe, with its own Holy Trinity, collides with our universe, we end up with six beings who are also one. A Holy Sexternity. But it's hard enough to keep three in line. Six is chaos, and leads to galactic war.

Original Version

In 2002, Phil Walsh, former Sixties hippy now businessman, [He was always a businessman, but now his business is legal] accepts an executive promotion which requires relocating his happy California family to his hometown, Chicago. In 1970, Phil had run away to escape his oppressive and conservative father, a World War II veteran and Chicago cop. He vowed never to return. The Generation Gap between the two remains open.

After moving, Phil’s life comes full circle when his own son runs away in an attempt to return to California. Phil’s pursuit of success and wealth might destroy his cherished family just as his own youthful commitment to the Sixties upended his boyhood family.

His family in turmoil, Phil questions why he moved back, and at the same time, wonders why he left in the first place. Were the Sixties relevant, or just another fad like disco in the Seventies? [You're comparing an entire decade to a dance craze. It's like asking, Is world hunger relevant, or just a fad like avocado toast?]  And worse, has he become the father he ran away from?

Phil’s runaway son stays with his grandfather [His grandfather, meaning Phil's father? Or Phil's son's mother's father? Is Phil's son's mother even in the book? Any confusion caused by referring to Phil and his father and his son and his son's grandfather might be diminished by giving Phil's son a name.] [But don't make the grandfather Phil senior and Phil Phil Jr, and Phil's son Phil III.] [Or do, and switch the setting from Chicago to Philadelphia.] and discovers him living a life reflective of the liberal causes Phil once supported. [A Chicago ex-cop isn't gonna move to California and become a liberal. Make him a Chicago ex-bartender.] When the grandfather suddenly dies, it is up to the son to show Phil the impact the Sixties had on his own father; and in so doing, he reunites three generations of his family. [One of whom is dead.] [If it was the sixties that had an impact on Phil's father, you'd think Phil would have noticed this was happening, and not run away in 1970. Unless. . .  Did the sixties impact dad in the nineties?]

Fathers, Sons and Their Holy Ghosts is an 84,000-word family saga flashing back to Beatlemania and the tumultuous Sixties. The assassinations of John Kennedy and John Lennon…Their Holy Ghosts…are presented as symmetrical milestones defining both generations.  

Readers of Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen, Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane and Commonwealth by Ann Patchett will enjoy this novel.

After a successful business career during which I took time off to study creative writing at The University of Iowa, University of Chicago, and Arizona State University, I completed this novel and had it copyedited. My life experiences as the son of a World War II veteran and the younger brother of a Sixties hippy inspired me to write my debut novel. [So, you are Phil and Phil's son.]

Notes

Does Phil's father know Phil ended up in California? Does he move close to where Phil lives? Does Phil know his father's in Cal. when he decides to move to Chicago? Has Phil's son been in contact with Phil's father? I can't tell if these people are like ships passing in the night, or if everyone's in touch with everyone, at least by phone. Surely Phil's mother would want contact with Phil and Phil's son.

I guess it's not unusual for literary fiction to be character-based, with minimal plot, but does something happen in this book besides people moving back and forth and Phil's son's dead grandfather somehow being reunited with his descendants? Was there a specific event that turned Phil's father around? 

Maybe it would be better if the  generations finally were actually united, arranged by Phil's son before the grandfather died, so Phil gets to see the change in his father, rather than hears about it second-hand when his son tells him that he and Grandpa spent all their time together smoking weed while listening to the Doors and the Dead.