The Paradoxical Parent, by Frank W. Butterfield

[Ulysses]

The Pardoxical Parent (Nick Williams #13)
Frank W. Butterfield
BY the author 2017
Four stars

“I saw a small purple flowers poking out through a patch of grime-covered snow.”
“And, gee. Wow. I didn’t realize you were both real.”

Ack. Book 13 in a series, and it just gets more intense! This one is very emotional, something we should have anticipated in the previous book, when Nick finds sixteen letters written to his father by his mother—after she was supposed to have died. Trick is, Nick’s father never read those letters.

There are tears. And anxiety. And, strangely enough, more joy than one might have anticipated.

Nick and Carter head East, to rural New England, where neither have ever been. They’re on the trail of Alexandra Williams, Nick’s long lamented mother, who supposedly died back in 1929 when Nick and his sister were just children. We thought we knew what had happened, until these letters turned up.

Volume 13 of the adventures of Nick and Carter, and their band of unconventional men and women, seems broadly to be about the meaning of life—and death. There is some rather unpleasant death in it, although the mystery is about a death that happened in the past. It is a journey of discovery for Nick, and therefore also for Carter, because this highly-charged narrative always circles back to these two young men, who have become internationally known—and not necessarily in a good way—simply because they love each other.

What is home? What is family? What is cruelty? What is generosity? These and other questions add the emotional spice that makes this book strikingly different from the dozen that have preceded it. The life we live is only partly decided by what other people do. Ultimately, our choices decide what our life will be. For a series of novels that purport to be all about hijinks in the fabulous fifties, there is an unexpected profundity in Frank Butterfield’s never-ending story.