Housewife Blues and Chihuahua Stories

Book Info
Kindle Edition, 320 pages
Published 2014 by Old Man Press
original title Patriarch Run
ASIN B00J49L77S
edition language English
setting Colorado, 2010 (United States)
other editions (2)
Source:Digital copy from author

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BOOK SYNOPSIS

Billy discovers that his father might be a traitor, that he was deployed to safeguard the United States from a cyberattack on its military networks. After that mission, his father disappeared along with the Chinese technology he was ordered to steal–a weapon powerful enough to sabotage the digital infrastructure of the modern age and force the human population into collapse.

Against a backdrop of suspense, the story explores the archetypal themes of fatherhood, coming of age and self-acceptance through a set of characters that will leave you changed.

My Thoughts

10 years have passed since Billy Erikson’s father Jack left he and his mother Rachel, sent on a mission for the secret government agency that he had walked away from years before Jack never returns home to Patriarch Run in Colorado.

The aftermath of a bombing is a devastating opening, the carnage of burned wreckage, dead bodies and bloody survivors has an immediate impact on the reader setting the stage for what is to come.

Somehow at the site of the bombing Jack manages to survive with only a few bodily injuries, his mental injuries however are much more severe and he is left not knowing how he was involved, why he was there or even who he is.

Driven by instinct he makes his way towards home, fending off with deadly force those who try to stop him and as he travels a few brutal memories of the past haunt him.

As the story flashes back and forth from past to present we learn that in the years since Jack has been gone that his son Billy and wife Rachel have managed to carve a new life for themselves, one that includes the local sheriff as a friendly substitute father figure and a man that Rachel can count on as well as love.

As the different entities that are searching for Jack, and the powerful weapon that if in the wrong hands could bring the world to it’s knees, seek to gain information of his whereabouts from Rachel their son Billy is in turn searching for his mother.

The race is on to see who finds Jack first, his enemies or his remaining friends and the future of humankind rests on stopping him from activating the technological signal that would cause a chain reaction of horrific consequences for mankind.

This story has several powerful messages embedded in it, not the least of which is that sometimes the hardest decisions we make have the best outcomes and that making those decisions means the difference between living a full life or just existing from one day to the next.

Powerful, moving, appalling in the scenario used by the author to explain Jack's actions and for me an adrenaline packed thrill ride from start to finish.