Sins of the Son

In one of the more bizarre and ironic twists to ever occur in the world of books, Carlton Stowers - who for several years has made his living as an award-winning writer of true crime, investigating the effects of senseless violence on families and victims - was himself thrust into a true-crime nightmare. Anson, Carlton's eldest son, was arrested for the murder of his twenty-five-year-old wife. Here is the wrenching story of a father and a son: Carlton, a single father who raised his boys while making a reputation for himself as a Dallas journalist, doing his best to protect his sons from the emotional pain of divorce, and trying to ingrain in them his own powerful sense of right and wrong; and Anson, a boy who seemed to always take the wrong path. From his teenage years on, Anson's life was a string of anger, violence, and criminal activity: drugs, forgery, auto theft, and, finally, murder. What goes wrong in a family to create such terror? And how does a father deal with the pain, anger, and guilt that comes with a child going bad? In Sins of the Son, we are given the painful and cathartic answer. Here is a crime writer and a father, grappling with the darkest truth that a parent could possibly have to face.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.