The Patricide of George Benjamin Hill

"Crazy? You're calling me crazy? Do you want to know what crazy is? Crazy is having a mistress and two children when you're already married to one woman with two other kids. Crazy is moving your family up to a wild west town on the edge of the tundra for seven years and thinking nothing could possibly go wrong…." This is just the beginning of a long tirade that enumerates the many grievances thirtysomething Max Hill has against his billionaire businessman father, George Benjamin Hill, who essentially abandoned him, his siblings, and his step-siblings to pursue success and wealth. The children's resentment is so profound, in fact—and their lives so stunted and directionless—that they have agreed to band together to hunt down their father and kill him. Although this may sound far-fetched, Charlesworth makes the psychological and emotional pain of these children very real. He takes us inside the minds of these young adults, depicting them as a kind of nightmare world of confusion, doubt, and rage. We see in this novel the emotional toll that absent or loveless parenting can take on children, and it is not pretty.