A brilliant character study and an example of thunderous storytelling.
Even heroes eventually succumb to old age and infirmity, but that inevitability doesn’t make it easy to watch. Frank Sinatra’s decline had been widely publicized, and though his passing isn’t a total shock to the public, the loss is still an immense blow. For 40-year-old Danny McKenna, the magnitude is amplified. A devoted fan of the iconic crooner, Danny receives word of his father’s passing on the same day as the singing legend. Coincidentally, Francis Xavier McKenna and Frank Sinatra shared the same lifetime of days on a calendar, but their personal lives couldn’t have been more different. It is this discrepancy that Danny is mulling over as he trades his Cape Cod honeymoon for an Irish family funeral back in the city where he grew up. Tasked with eulogizing his father, Danny struggles to paint a picture of a man he knew only as Dad, not Francis the soldier, Francis the husband, or Francis the friend. An eventful funeral service leaves Danny reeling and sets him on a path of discovery. What he hopes will fill in some gaps and defend his father’s legacy ends up revealing a man with more depth than Danny could ever have imagined.
A brilliant character study and an example of thunderous storytelling, Frank’s Shadow drops you into Danny’s family, offers you a beer (or a soda!), and invites you to kick up your feet and stay a while. At the outset, Francis McKenna feels like the embodiment of his generation, an Irish immigrant who dutifully served his country and quietly loved his family. But as his engrossing backstory is revealed in the form of intensely personal war letters to his lover, Danny’s mom, readers get to know a man driven by principles and haunted by his choices. It is incredibly rare for an author to create a fictional character as authentic and memorable as Francis, and McIntyre builds this believable sketch even without the heavy use of dialogue. Doug McIntyre’s prose is articulate, almost noir, and incredibly compelling for audiences who are transported to the European front lines. The scenes with family feel so convincing you’ll see yourself jammed into the booth at Gabel’s Italian restaurant, sipping on a Gin Rickey while you watch the family drama unfold. We know and love our parents, but only in the context of family, and this fresh novel considers this relationship in a new light. An engrossing history lesson and a genuinely entertaining book, Frank’s Shadow is a generational tale of love, family, and sacrifice.
