My Father the Werewolf [Hardcover]

Henry Garfield (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 26, 2005

Teenagers Miranda and Danny move to Maine to be near a deserted island where their werewolf father can isolate himself during full moons, but when the ocean freezes and creates a path to the populated mainland, they resort to desperate measures to save the townspeople from their transformed parent.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 8-10–A werewolf is loose in Pismo Beach and on a foggy evening in June, Ken Paxton is attacked while walking on the beach with his children, Danny, 14, and Miranda, 16. The attack is thwarted by local werewolf hunter Sid McKenzie, but not before the creature inflicts enough damage to seal Ken's fate. Knowing that he must find a place to change while keeping innocent people from danger, Ken moves his family from California to Maine, where he knows of a deserted 20-acre island perfect for his needs–close enough to the mainland to reach by boat but not close enough to swim to it. That is, unless Maine has the coldest winter in 50 years and the bay freezes solid enough to walk across. The story has potential, but it isn't very interesting. Most of it focuses on the days leading up to the full moon and Ken's job. Readers will more likely want to know about the details of his transformation and perhaps some werewolf lore, both of which are lacking. It is clear from the few scenes involving the beast that the author is capable of exciting, attention-grabbing description. However, readers will be disappointed by the lack of action and suspense, and the characters are so poorly developed that it's difficult to care about them. Steer teens interested in werewolves to Clare B. Dunkle's By These Ten Bones (Holt, 2005) or Annette Curtis Klause's Blood and Chocolate (Delacorte, 1997).–Michele Capozzella, Chappaqua Public Library, NY
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Gr. 9-12. Like Garfield's Tartabull's Throw and Moondog (both 2001), this difficult tale shows his dark sensibility and his passion for baseball. Teens Miranda and Danny move with their father, Ken, from coastal California to Maine. As seen through the eyes of his children, especially Danny, Ken is a dreamer, a writer, a stoner; and at each full moon, they row him out to an uninhabited island, where he turns into a werewolf, having been bitten in California. In December the bay freezes over, allowing Ken, in werewolf form, to hunt in town. Danny tries to save him and the town by using his treasured collection of fireworks, which leads to a fire that burns down the call center where Ken works. The 2001 baseball season, which plays a role, lightens the story somewhat. Point of view shifts from Danny to Dad to other figures in the novel tend to be abrupt, and the book doesn't so much end as simply stops. The fragile possibility for a solution offers some hope in the denouement. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 13 and up
  
• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books (July 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689851804
• ISBN-13: 978-0689851803
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,521,507 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Conceived on New Year's Eve and named after Hank Williams (his parents unaware that the legendary singer's given name was Hiram), Henry Garfield was born in Philadelphia on September 4, 1957, one month before the launching of Sputnik. He moved with his family to the Maine Coast just in time to get caught up in the 1967 American League pennant race and become a Red Sox fan for life. The author's great-great-grandfather was James A. Garfield, the twentieth U.S. President.

The author followed in the footsteps of the President's four sons by attending St. Paul's School in Concord, NH, from which he graduated in 1976. After undergraduate studies in English, History, and Astronomy at Beloit College in Wisconsin, the University of Maine, and San Diego State University, he took most of two decades to begin a career as a novelist before earning his MFA in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine in 2004, the same year his historical novel The Lost of John Cabot was published by Simon and Schuster.

He is the proud father of two grown children: a daughter, Polaris, and a son, Rigel. The author raised both as a single parent and dedicated his first novel, Moondog (published by St. Martin's Press in 1995) to them. Polaris recently graduated cum laude in English from the University of Maine; Rigel is studying filmmaking at San Diego City College.

Hank spent most of the 1980s and 1990s in Southern California before returning to Maine in 1999. He now lives in Bangor, Maine with his second wife, Elaine Garfield, RN, who works in the surgical department at a local hospital. He teaches writing at the University of Maine and is a contributing editor and feature writer for Bangor Metro Magazine.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Horror From Coast To Coast, February 22, 2006

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Father the Werewolf (Hardcover)

Ken isn't a bad father per se, he just doesn't have much ambition. When he brings his children to Pismo Beach being bitten by a werewolf is the last thing on his mind. A kindly hunter or hermit explains the situation to him and to his two lonely children, Miranda and Danny. The important thing is keeping them safe from Ken when he turns into a werewolf, which is monthly, and secondarily the heroic trio must eke out a lifestyle in which Ken can take a job and support his family while maintaining the werewolf lifestyle, in Maine. Liverpool, a working class coastal town, calls to them, calls them back like a siren's song.

Just as in real life much of Maine's native industries have been displaced by a giant loan and collection agency, the town of Liverpool has been subject to their own vampiric influence, a sinister lending operations called AMIC. Little Miranda has her own obscene name for this acronym.

Tensions rise in the village between representatives of the huge conglomerate and the ordinary people who are feeling shoved out and displaced by mass capital. Garfield paints a vicious picture of globalization and proves that leftleaning horror writing can be more than mere liberal propaganda. Where the werewolf story fits in isn't really clear, and little Danny, who suffers through his father's distressing pot use, is sort of a sad sack and not really much of a hero, but in general Garfield has the right idea and knows how to make a wolf seem evil--and corporations too.

It's a sad story, sadder than most because (werewolf storyline aside) it rings so true. Children today don't have parents they can't count on, and they are forced to grow up too soon.

The ending of the book is bleak, like something by Georges Simenon. In capitalism, the author seems to say, we are all in a sort of prison farm, where the big bosses are pissing on the floor and expecting us to clean it up. Not very cheerful, but Brechtian to a fault.