Many people are caught in Hank’s “sandwich generation” and supporting their parents-but with nothing like $17 million to allay expenses. On the other hand, readers may find his self-pity hard to take, given his mostly enviable position in life.

On the one hand, he’s a nice-guy hero who takes care of the people around him for example, when his siblings won’t help their father, Hank is willing to bail him out, which costs him much time, money, and effort.

The author paces his story well and offers some pithy images: when family friends observe the protagonist’s resemblance to his departed mother, he notes “an awkward stir of the emotional sediment that has gone untouched since our last meeting.” Hank, though, is a problematic character. Then, his unreliable father has a financial crisis and a health scare that forces Hank to re-examine his own choices. However, it turns out that she has a past that affects other people in his circle. He has a large extended family, due to his parents’ divorces and remarriages, and they all want to see him for the holidays-or as he terms it, his “annual trial-several long weeks that will test my character and prove my endurance.” Although he’s insecure, he’s still attractive enough for a beautiful woman, Erin Contee, to give him her number. At 29, he owns his own boutique greeting-card firm, which has received a multimillion-dollar buyout offer. Hank Hanson has problems that many other people would like to have. In Peters’ ( Peter in Flight, 2013) novel, a young man on the brink of making it big must sort out his complicated family and personal situations.

Peter in Flight by Paul Michael Peters