Newly updated, edited and proofed second edition, December, 2020
Wagner Siebenthaller is a hard working man. All that hard work has paid off in a good business, a nice house, a pretty wife, a growing daughter and a girlfriend on the side.
But life gets unbearably hard when his daughter is assaulted. Now all Wagner wants is revenge. Obsession for vengeance, however, cracks open his psyche. What comes out is a tsunami of pain and violence that crashes across the Kentucky landscape carrying away the lives of anyone close to him.
In this brutally honest novel, Howard McEwen explores the meaning of manhood and fatherhood in a modern America that marginalizes the virtues of men and fathers.
"Caution: Daddy Issues is a real punch in the gut!"- Kia Heavey, author of Night Machines
"In Daddy Issues, author Howard McEwen has crafted a tight tale that will elicit passion and emotion from any parent. McEwen has elevated his game with a story that grabs you from the very first page and keeps you hanging on with the turn of each page. Excellent."- Rick Robinson, author of Alligator Alley, winner of the grand prize at the Great Southeast Book Festival in 2013.
"McEwen's style is gritty and honest, fleshing out characters by exploring defining childhood moments and hidden agendas."- Meira Pentermann, author of Firefly Beach and Nine-Tenths
"Howard McEwen recognizes that people have secrets. Everyone. Some of them are relatively innocent. Some of them are quite dark and destructive. But everyone has them, and everyone's choices are affected by them. Sometimes tragically so. During my nearly three decades in police work, I was exposed in a deep and intimate way to the things that people can do to one another. Not simply what they do, but why they do it - or why they believe they do it. As I read Daddy Issues, I thought, "I know these people. Every one of them." McEwen did an amazing job capturing the basic human motives that drove a dark-hearted, power hungry man to be the governor of Kentucky in his novel, Wrath. In his latest novel, he nails the human condition and understands that what drives people is a strange mix of lust, logic, emotion and -- all too often -- a darkness that they don't understand."- Police Chief William Cole (retired)
