Fifteen-year-old Ian Daly’s moral universe is turned upside down when, at his father’s funeral, he discovers that his father had two secret families.
“Cassidy’s debut is affecting … Like the best coming-of-age novels, Here Lies a Father grounds its big concerns in the exquisite particulars of one person’s life.” —Literary Hub
When Ian Daly and his sister Catherine arrive for their wayward father’s funeral in his small and desolate upstate New York hometown, a secret that was kept from them their entire lives emerges: their father Thomas abandoned two other families, leaving behind two furious wives and several children who never knew their father. Ian wants to know more of the truth, but his sister and mother want to preserve the carefully constructed myth they’ve created around who Thomas really was.
In the cold, lonely winter landscape of small-town New York, fifteen-year-old Ian sets out alone to learn the truth about his father’s past and the families he left behind. Here Lies a Father examines the long-term effects shameful secrets have on a family, and how difficult it is for a young man to reconstruct his own sense of right and wrong, when every value and moral principle he was ever taught was based on a lie.
