In the Wake of the Boatman by Jonathon Scott Fuqua
Here is what Amazon has to say about the book:
In the Wake of the Boatman is a study of family dynamics and sexuality. The narrative concentrates on the life of Puttnum Douglas Steward, born during the middle of World War Two, and immediately considered better off dead than alive by his father. And so begins Puttnum's life. Spanning the next thirty three years, his is an existence of deep sorrow and humorous irony. A befuddled adolescent, Puttnum is a good, hardworking student, but an angry young man. In his junior year of high school, he is arrested for joy riding, an event which galvanizes his father's poor opinion of him. Nevertheless, two years later he is accepted into the University of Virginia on an ROTC scholarship. Cloistered away at school, he begins to detect something different about himself, culminating in a brief, unnerving fling with his annoying cadet commander. After college, in the weeks prior to officer's training school, he dons a dress and pantyhose for the first time, initiating a struggle to accept this unexpected and entirely unwanted facet of his personality. Initially horrified, Puttnum asks to see action in Vietnam, where he is determined to suppress his urge or terminate all problems. Instead, he returns to the states three years later, wounded and decorated and no less confused. Through fate or irony, he immediately becomes an American mole within a Russian spy ring. This event ultimately catapults him into the nation's conscience, where the media and the Army depict him as the prototypical American man. A flustered icon with a bizarre secret, Puttnum becomes the armed forces' token hero, its soul luminary in the Vietnam era. Racked by guilt and his father's death, his problems begin to boil, and he flees his life and celebrity in a final attempt to come to terms with himself. There are many characters throughout the book, all of whom make an impact, of some sort, on Puttnum's. His beautiful sister Mary, a psychologist, understands others better than she understands herself. Her husband, Chester (Survival) Darwin, is the archetypal Hemingway male and the logical person to secede her father as the dominant man in her life. He is the type to swallow tacks to illustrate his hardened nature. His mother, Helen, is a woman of extreme beauty and a weakness for the bottle. Well meaning but misguided, she is an alcoholic with an aristocratic lineage. More than anything, she desires to recapture her family's lost nobility, a state which she believes existed, momentarily, in the early years of her marriage. Puttnum's father, Carl, is a man confounded by the masculine stereotypes of his time. An annoying knee injury, suffered in childhood, keeps him from service during World War Two. A series of scarred ligaments and muscles cramps one of his legs whenever he experiences high pressure situations. Humiliated by the implications, Carl projects his anxieties onto his male child, and worries, throughout the years, that his boy will never stack up. As he gets older, however, he begins to perceive, in moments of introspection, that his behavior is the cause of their alienation.
The Hollow by Nora Roberts (2nd in the Sign of Seven trilogy)
Here is what the author's website says about the book:
For Fox, Caleb, Gage and the other residents of Hawkins Hollow, the number seven portends doom—ever since, as boys, they freed a demon trapped for centuries when their blood spilled upon The Pagan Stone...
Their innocent bonding ritual led to seven days of madness, every seven years. And now, as the dreaded seventh month looms before them, the men can feel the storm brewing. Already they are plagued by visions of death and destruction. But this year, they are better prepared, joined in their battle by three women who have come to The Hollow. Layla, Quinn, and Cybil are somehow connected to the demon, just as the men are connected to the force that trapped it.
