The Casual Oblivion of Francis Keene
A lifelong grifter. A road trip he may have invented. A grandson who's starting to see what no one else can.
A lifelong grifter. A road trip he may have invented. A grandson who's starting to see what no one else can.
Frank Keene has a gift for talking people into things they never intended to do. To his exhausted, newly divorced son David, that's just a polite way of saying his father is a lifelong conman. Now stuck in an assisted living facility, Frank drops a bombshell: his cancer has returned. His dying wish is one last cross-country road trip to a colossal Florida amusement park he once promised his late wife they'd visit.
David expects bad diner coffee, cheap motels, and his father slipping right back into his old manipulative ways. He gets all of it. But with his thirteen-year-old son Eli in the backseat, David soon realizes this is no ordinary farewell tour.
Frank hasn't just been hiding the truth about his prognosis. He's been hiding the reality of his gift. Frank's legendary ability to read people isn't charm — it's something darker. And it's surfacing in Eli.
Funny, razor-sharp, and devastatingly tender, The Casual Oblivion of Francis Keene is a big-hearted American road trip about the weight of our deceptions, the painful burden of human empathy, and the terrifying grace of finally seeing your family clearly.
At the heart of the novel is a single, devastating gift — one Frank has carried his whole life, and one he never wanted to pass on.
The terrifying grace of finally seeing your family for who they really are.— From The Novel
Frank Keene, seventy years old, stage-manages his own farewell. A diagnosis he may have invented. A promise to a late wife he may have never made.
David, newly divorced, drives. He has heard every story. He knows every con. He thinks he knows what this trip is for.
Eli, thirteen, is starting to see things he can't explain. Then he realizes his grandfather can see them too — and always has.
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