Bob Seay

Dad Bob Seay

"An emotional roller coaster of a story that will having you laughing out loud one minute and wiping away tears the next" - Writing Matters Book Review blog.

"The prose itself is beautiful to read, and the plot is gripping. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who loves a book that goes deeper than surface level as it examines the things that makes us human." - Andrea RamirezWinner 2021 IAN Book of the Year Awards ("Literary/General Fiction") WINNER OF A 2021 INDIEREADER DISCOVERY AWARD2021 National Indie Excellence Award Finalist

In Dad by Bob Seay, we meet Jacob, our narrator and protagonist, in his mid forties, struggling both in his marriage and with his almost legal career. With his "compulsion to tell everybody everything," he tells us his story as if we are his best friends, exposing all his failures, amusing quirks, and random but interesting bits of information he has gleaned from his unusual occupation. But while Jacob wrestles from time to time with ethics and his overall lack of accomplishment, he is somehow making it work.

Enter Jacob's dad, John Martin.

John's mind isn't as sharp as it once was, but that doesn't stop him once he decides to drive from his home in Cincinnati to Jacob's place in Colorado. He inevitably gets lost along the way and thus sets in motion the drama of a family watching over the sunset of their patriarch's life.

From the Readers' Favorite review by Jon Michael Miller:
Despite Jacob's honest flaws and his relentless search for self and redemption, I came to like and even to identify with him. Yes, he is largely responsible, as he admits, for his own problems. Fortunately, he is in a stable, tight-knit family, all intent on taking care of their sad, but sometimes funny dad. But I felt that Dad is the vehicle of the real underlying story, which is Jacob trying to dig himself out of the hole he has dug for himself. He meets his female spiritual twin in the person of Amelia, a refugee from her own career and an aspiring artist. Amelia escapes from an abusive boyfriend in Jacob's black Mustang convertible, nicknamed Beast... I was both sadly moved and often amused by Jacob's search for a better life. And along with the story, we learn a lot from the various topics Jacob ghost-writes about-nursing burnout, the Federal Reserve, and Buddhism, to name only a few. Oh, yes, and the Stanford Marshmallow Index, which somehow nibbles at Jacob's core. And we meet a quirky, loving family in the turmoil of losing the family patriarch, who is quite an overarching backdrop in his own right. Author Bob Seay dedicates his novel Dad "to all families with aging parents," and I cannot imagine a more accurate portrayal or one more moving.