The Golden Boy

In early 2003, Stafford Hopkins, a retired American network television executive in his late fifties, lives with his wife, Agnes, in an extravagant house on the Hawaiian island of Maui. He has begun waking up crying for reasons he cannot explain. Agnes, whom he married nine days after meeting her at a campus bar at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, has only recently returned to his bed after a long separation. Their marriage is held together by mutual need more than love.

Flashbacks reveal Stafford's childhood on a farm near Napanee, Ontario, where he grew up as the younger son of Michael and Mary-Jean Hopkins. His older brother, Emmett, 15 years his senior, has an alcohol addiction whose consequences dominate the family. Stafford's closest bond is with Bobby Shepherd, a boy born within weeks of him on the neighboring farm. Bobby is homely and acne-scarred but possesses a moral clarity that Stafford, raised in fear and Catholic obedience, lacks. Their imaginative childhood centers on an enormous rock in the field between their farms. In 1959, when a 14-year-old boy named Steven Truscott is convicted of murdering a classmate in Ontario, Bobby becomes consumed with the case, insisting Truscott was not framed but "used." Stafford, conditioned to accept authority, resists until the two come to blows. Their friendship survives and deepens.

Stafford's family disintegrates. His father suffers a heart attack and is permanently weakened. Emmett, sent to buy cattle in Quebec, returns instead with a racehorse named Brenda Bee Hoover, trains the horse, and wins seven consecutive races, while a new television set brings the family brief happiness. But 10 months later, Michael dies. The farm is sold, and Stafford goes to live with his uncle, Christian (Christy) Hopkins. Emmett later arrives at Christy's farm with a gun, drunk and demanding the horse. He shoots Brenda Bee in the shoulder, and Stafford fires the shot that puts her down. Emmett attempts suicide, fails, and is sent to Collins Bay Penitentiary.

Before their daughter Calliope (Callie) is born, Agnes gives birth to a son at a Catholic hospital in Kingston. An early ultrasound reveals the baby has anencephaly, a condition in which the skull and cerebral hemispheres fail to develop. Stafford, invoking the Catholic faith he otherwise ignores, refuses to terminate the pregnancy. Agnes continues the pregnancy until a seventh-month cesarean delivery. When the infant is placed in Stafford's arms, he collapses and strikes the priest who arrives to baptize the dying child. The baby dies unnamed and unbaptized. The couple moves to Los Angeles, where Stafford builds a television career.

Callie arrives after a traumatic labor. Agnes, who has concealed her brutal childhood behind a sanitized story, lacks any model for mothering. In truth, Agnes's mother, Evelyn Delores Gardener, was an unwed teenager who turned to street drugs and prostitution. Six-year-old Agnes was sexually assaulted while crossing a park and arrived at her mother's home to find her dead. She was sent to live with her grandmother in Big Falls, Wisconsin. Stafford, consumed by his career, is no better as a parent. Callie grows into a reckless young woman, and on Christmas Eve 2002 calls from jail, arrested for the sexual confinement of a 17-year-old. Agnes moves into the pool house for 40 days, returning with a truce: no more talk about Callie.

The central crisis arrives when a letter from Ontario informs Stafford that Donny and Marilyn Shepherd have been killed in a car accident and have named him guardian of their four children. Donny is the son of Bobby Shepherd's teenage girlfriend, Carrie Ann Schwenke, born after Bobby's death and raised by Bobby's parents. Agnes is furious. Stafford breaks down sobbing, telling her he once had a friend named Bobby Shepherd.

Before the letter arrives, Stafford and Agnes share a rare day of tenderness that turns dangerous. Rattled by an encounter with a former colleague, Stafford wades into the surf at DT Fleming Beach, known for its riptides. A wave drags him under. Agnes throws herself into the water with a fragment of a child's foam noodle and paddles beside him until they are thrown onto the beach.

Stafford flies to Ontario, intending only to set up trust funds. His uncle Christy confronts him: The children need him, not money. Stafford refuses, and Christy walks away in disgust. Sleepless in Kingston, Stafford stops at the Church of the Good Thief and confesses to a caretaker the truth he has carried for decades. At a dance on Wolfe Island in their teens, Stafford, drunk and jealous, seduced Bobby's girlfriend Carrie Ann while Bobby was away buying raffle tickets. Bobby found them, said nothing, and walked across the frozen lake toward Kingston in a March blizzard. He was found frozen the next morning by his father. Uncle Christy, who rescued Stafford from the ice that night, is the only other person who knows what happened.

In Napanee, Stafford meets the Shepherds' lawyer, Roger Nuland, a 64-year-old man with cerebral palsy who works from a basement office. The door bursts open and the four children arrive: Lucy, a toddler; Andy, a six-year-old with extensive learning disabilities; Donald Junior, a glowering 14-year-old; and Bobby, a 12-year-old with pale-green eyes and red hair. Bobby approaches Stafford and says, "You're Stafford Hopkins. You're my grandfather's friend." Stafford accepts guardianship.

He does not tell Agnes. At two in the morning, he sets off the house's security alarm. Agnes, alone for days and disoriented from a sleeping pill, grabs a Smith & Wesson revolver she purchased after a break-in while Stafford was away. She fires several times before confronting Stafford and the children at the side entrance. When she drops the gun, Andy reaches for it, but Donny, a fast-pitch catcher, catches it first. It fires one last time, grazing Stafford's pants.

The next morning, Stafford and Agnes walk to the stone wall at the edge of their property and have the most honest conversation of their marriage. He tells her everything about Bobby's death, including the possibility that Bobby's grandchildren may be his own biological grandchildren, since he slept with Carrie Ann before Bobby died. Agnes refuses DNA testing and insists they keep the children. Over the following months, a family forms. Donny builds a bunkhouse with Stafford. Bobby holds his siblings together with quiet patience. Andy cries on good days when happiness reminds him his parents are gone. Agnes learns to mother for the first time. Callie, contacted by email, is initially hostile but softens, revealing she is in a relationship with a woman named Cynthia, a pediatric resident. Agnes is warmly supportive.

A letter dated April 2, 2016, from Bobby, now a graduate student at Berkeley, to Donny reveals that Stafford has died at 71 of acute respiratory distress syndrome, his lungs filling with fluid. He drowned, as he always believed he would. Agnes held his hands at the end, then stepped back to let Lucy and Andy hold them as Stafford died. His ashes are to be buried in the Napanee graveyard next to Bobby Shepherd, his childhood friend. The novel closes with an echo of the two boys as children, lying on the ground after imaginary adventures, watching a sky that changes with each blink of their eyes.