It's nearing Election Day 1984, and to support her husband David's run for the U.S. Senate, Danielle Christie represents him at a fundraiser where the alcohol flows. Driving home with Nick, their 16-year-old son, Danielle crashes the car, killing the boy--an event that clinches the sympathy vote and hence the election for David Christie.
This is hardly the only irony found in Nicholas Montemarano's third novel, The Senator's Children, which hosts a familiar medley of campaign-story tropes--adultery, love child, scandal--and literary fiction mainstays: broken marriage, psychic scarring, degenerative illness. Montemarano's trick is to work this well-trod ground in a quiet, particularized way. Adopting a roving third-person perspective that spans 1977 through 2010, he gives prominent voice to high-strung Betsy, who since her older brother's death has been visited by "the Nick-feeling." As a pregnant adult, Betsy moves into the Philadelphia brownstone where she grew up to be closer to her Parkinson's-suffering father's nursing care facility. Unbeknownst to Betsy, David has been receiving visits from college student Avery, his illegitimate daughter, although he doesn't know who she is.
As a senator, David made a bid for the presidency, and The Senator's Children can't help but call to mind the career-blighting scandal of John Edwards. Yet as its title attests, the novel belongs to the wounded offspring. When Avery sees newly elected president Barack Obama with Michelle and the kids on television, she thinks, "Let it be authentic. Let this family turn out to be okay." --Nell Beram, freelance writer and author