DW Wilson's top 10 absent fathers in literature
From astronauts on mission to rig-workers killed at sea, here are some of fiction's most memorable missing patriarchs
The novelist and short-story writer DW Wilson … haunted by tales of distant dads
In my first novel, Ballistics, a young man searches for his estranged father at the behest of his dying grandad. Wildfires blaze through the Canadian Rockies, and it is into this furnace that Alan West, the protagonist, must venture. It's a story of families, betrayal and one young man's attempt to right past wrongs.
I should put my cards on the table: I do not have an absent father. My old man and I get along as well as any dad and son separated by an ocean and the better part of a continent. He's a sergeant in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and he recently showed up for my wedding in full ceremonial garb: red serge, stiff-brimmed stetson, riding boots and spurs, his marksman badge and medals a-jingle on his breast. He cut an impressive figure.