Daddy Love

A Mystery Novel by Joyce Carol Oates

Subgenres:

Psychological Thriller,
Dark Fiction

Published 2013

Length 290 pages

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This book is for you if you're into...

Psychological cat and mouse with a chilling preacher villain
Stories of stolen identity and forced transformation
Unflinching looks at trauma and survival from a child's perspective

From Little Stack

It began as an ordinary afternoon. Dinah Whitcomb, a young mother with the perfect life, walks across a parking lot with five-year-old Robbie. Then the unthinkable happens. Robbie is taken from her grasp and left battered and broken on the ground. As her body heals, her heart struggles to move on without knowing what happened to her darling boy.

It’s a question any mother would want answered. But does she really want to know that Robbie was renamed Gideon and brainwashed into believing Daddy Love was his true dad? Or that all the other sons vanished after Daddy Love deemed them unworthy? Robbie may not remember who he was. All he knows is that if he wants to survive, he has to escape. By any means necessary.

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Publisher Description

Robbie Whitcomb is five years old when he's taken from his mother in a mall parking lot. In her attempt to chase the kidnapper, she's left badly injured and permanently disfigured. Such are the methods of the man who calls himself Daddy Love—a man known to the rest of the world as charismatic preacher Chester Cash.

For the next six years, Robbie is to be Daddy's son. That means doing whatever Daddy says—and giving him whatever he wants. Soon Robbie learns to accept his new name, Gideon. He also learns that he is not the first of Daddy Love's sons. And that each of the others, after reaching a certain age, was never seen again.

As Robbie's mother recovers from her wounds, her life and marriage are a daily struggle. But as years go by, she maintains a flicker of hope that her son is still alive. Meanwhile, Robbie approaches the "bittersweet age" with no illusions about his fate. But somewhere within this tortured child lies a spark of rebellion. And he knows all too well what survival requires.

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