The Son of a Sharecropper's Son

The Son of a Sharecropper’s Son is the fifth book I’ve read from Thomas K. Matthews, and as inferred by the title, it’s a three-generational story. This is a very different murder mystery. Rather, it’s about a man, Kyle Lee Bradley, who is already a husband and father, trying to tract his own family history as a means of understanding his own emotional struggles. He has a psychologist who suggested this journey. Kyle know his family’s origins were in Alabama, that his grandfather had abruptly moved the family to Michigan, and then his own father had migrated to California, completely cutting himself off from the family he left behind. Kyle’s own father would talk about none of it, but he had become like his own abusive father, so he had only run away geographically and not emotionally. Kyle wanted to know more. As a psychiatrist, I thought this story captured exactly what I do with patients when I do a psychic archeological dig. The goal is not to find someone to blame, but to see patterns in the past so those patterns can be recognized in the present – and then managed differently. Matthews insights are remarkable. This is a story worth reading – best done in a single session. Where’s the murder and who was killed? You’ll have to read the book to find out, and it should be released by the publisher in the next few months.