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© 2023 Katarina Naskovski
FLOWERS FOR PAPA,
an intimate and penetrating testament to the importance of men's mental health and dismantling the negative social construct against male expression and affection.
Down Bruckner Street, it was a smoldering Louisiana summer.
August Johnson had just been delivered to his adoring fathers: Peter, the tediously stable, and Alvin, the accidental eccentric. It was a quiet penguin-pajama childhood until Alvin's sudden death following his son's sixth birthday. For the next six years, August's young eyes witnessed the emotional liquidation of his father Peter, and he endured his own struggles silent and fatherless.
At the age of twelve, he was sent away from the home that was no longer, and to his Great Aunt Myrtle in Twin Falls, Idaho. Thus began a six-year estrangement.
August, eighteen now, doesn't talk about his childhood. He doesn't intend to.
But he finally accepts his fate at the final push: an unmarked letter in the mail, telling of Peter Johnson's sudden sickness and his seeking of his son.
The six years of their parting has now begun to wane as the road unfolds before August and his spirited passenger, with the chance encounters of near-death at Denny's, the ever-enjoyable meeting of a one-eyed drug dealer at the urinal, and the loss of the only person August was certain he ever loved.
Finally, the estranged will be reunited at last, and the truth of Alvin's death unearthed...
Awards
01.
Readers' Favorite Five-Star Review Cover Seal