A review by stevienlcf
Daddy Love by Joyce Carol Oates

4.0

“Daddy Love”is a wrenching novel that opens in 2006 with the abduction of five-year-old Robbie Whitcomb in a suburban mall parking lot. As the opening chapter repeats the traumatic event with added detail, we learn that Robbie’s young mother, Dinah, managed to grab hold of the van carrying her son and was dragged beneath it across the pavement for 50 feet before her body was released and she was left broken and with life-threatening injuries. Oates then shifts our attention to Robbie’s abductor, who refers to himself as Daddy Love, an itinerant preacher and a sexual predator who hunts for young boys, drugs and imprisons them in a coffin-like structure, and then stashes them in a rural New Jersey farmhouse where he allows them some freedoms after he has destroyed their free will. What is most extraordinary about this charismatic monster is that he is able to adapt an “ordinary guy” persona, Chet Cash, and move effortlessly amongst the denizens of his rural community, selling his macrame creations (which were actually made by Robbie) to admiring boutique owners, and chatting with other “fathers” about sports and construction. As the years pass, we learn how the once “bright chattery, happy child,” and his parents, whose marriage is impacted by this tragedy, cope with unspeakable physical and psychological pain. Perhaps most harrowing in this disturbing book is the question of whether rescue and salvation are even possible for Robbie.