Father Time (PB) (2021)

FATHER TIME tells a story of fatherhood from a child's perspective. This bittersweet novel embraces themes of parenthood and family dysfunction within the African American community.

Trevor Russell, our protagonist, is suffering from writer's block after his first novel's success. In between success, he tries to find inspiration to write his next project, which is due in a week, or the agency he works with will drop him. Trevor receives a call from his estranged father, KWESI BLACK, who is in Atlanta Georgia, visiting for a trucking convention. Not seeing one another in several years, Trevor and Kwesi meet up for a tense coffee shop reunion.

Kwesi reveals that he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and has finally come to grips with his tainted past. He wants to make amends for his lack of responsibility as a father. By this time, it is too late. Trevor feels Kwesi lived his best life, but now that his father is dying, he wants to mend his relationships with his children. Trevor is also in a stagnant relationship that takes an exciting twist once he finds out his live-in girlfriend is expecting. The news of becoming a father frightens Trevor due to the lack of his father in his life growing up, and he packs a bag and leaves.

Trevor escapes for the weekend and heads back home to Arkansas to get away from his pregnant girlfriend, the pressure of writing, and the unexpected visit from his father. Coincidently the weekend he goes back home is the same weekend as his 20-year High School Class Reunion.

Trevor settles in his old bedroom and finds some of his childhood belongings scattered around in the room. Under some old magazines, he finds an old senior year scrapbook. When Trevor opens the first page of the old album, he discovers a list of people who did him wrong at one point during his school years. Amongst the list is a few names of classmates, including his father, Kwesi.

Trevor finds inspiration and starts writing a compelling memoir walking us through memory lane of growing up yearning for a father who wasn't in his life. Titled Daddy Issues, the book delivers a funny yet brash story that navigates through the crack-infested 1980s, growing up with his mischievous brother in the nineties and becoming an adult in the new millennium. The journal highlights childhood memories of being raised by a struggling single mother who works three jobs with the support of Trevor's silly bickering grandparents.

Trevor decides to attend his class reunion to get revenge on old classmates and reconnect with his childhood crush, Sade. During Trevor's visit back home, Kwesi's wife tragically dies in a car wreck to end the almost perfect weekend. This sequence of events ultimately leads to Trevor orchestrating a family trip up in the Rocky Mountains as an olive branch to reconnect his terminally ill father with his estranged siblings. During the Thanksgiving getaway, Kwesi finds out Trevor's book highlights his philandering past, and all hell breaks loose.

As time passes along, Trevor has become the father he always wanted growing up. He makes one last attempt to rekindle his relationship with his Kwesi, but Father Time waits for no one.