Phantom Fathers
The Maggie Barnes Trilogy
- Fiction
- Publisher: Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2022
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Publisher's Description
Another story about Maggie Barnes and her family. By digging into online genealogy records and talking with their chatty Aunt Lillian, Maggie's children discover the World War II struggles of their paternal grandparents and their silent father, Ross. It's not a story to make kids proud. They find it easier to be critical of their flawed family and assume the next generation will do better. Like an autopsy, Phantom Fathers exposes the problems of this thinking. Soon enough these critical children will be the parents of their own adult children, and they will have their day in court. As Maggie's children discover the trauma that tore through their father's life and the way their grandparents dealt with it--brutal events during World War II, desperate decisions that fractured the family, and a dishonorable emigration to the United States--they wonder if they could have done better under the circumstances. Ross's silence begins to make sense. Most surprising are events that stir the sympathy of disappointed children and open the way to admitting the truth about imperfect ancestors.
Endorsements (4)
“In the capable hands of storyteller Mary VanderGoot, we are reminded of the power in knowing the past. Power to affirm family and love. Power to heal fractured intergenerational relationships. . . . Readers will find Phantom Fathers a captivating story of struggle to answer: What do we do with our history, even history we don’t want to know? A highly satisfying conclusion to The Maggie Barnes Trilogy.”
“The Maggie Barnes Trilogy comes to its conclusion in Phantom Fathers. In this final novel, we see Maggie Barnes’s children considering her harvest customs as well as the customs of their grandparents . . . . In that process, they discover as much about themselves as they do about their parents and grandparents. Readers will find themselves productively engaged in that same task, of learning to make better personal sense of the past.”
“How do we view the sins of our ancestors? Written with realism and wisdom, Phantom Fathers helps us take a more compassionate look at our imperfect forerunners—and at ourselves.”
“With literary eloquence and psychological insight, Mary VanderGoot’s Maggie Barnes Trilogy explores in fine detail the joys, tragedies, and complexities of a loving but troubled family. In understated, delicate prose, VanderGoot tells a multigenerational story of difficult truths and messy secrets that readers may well recognize from their own experience.”
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