The Ties That Bind

Robert Lamb is back with his latest novel, and he takes readers to the streets of Atlanta, Georgia, and to the shores of Pawleys Island, South Carolina. Ben Blake, a writer-in-residence at a Southern university, is summoned to Atlanta by the emotional breakdown of his son Charles, an architect with no history of mental illness, but whose mother killed herself when he was fifteen. Ben agrees to help Charles's psychiatrist reconstruct her new patient's history; Charles has remained silent. But when it is revealed that Charles has furtively planned to enter the Catholic priesthood, Ben, who is not reli- gious, feels bereft: He has not only lost his wife, but will he now lose his son, an only child, and the prospect of grandchildren, too? In other words, Ben will be working against his own self-interests. What to do? What to do? What would you do?