Daddy Love

Joyce Carol Oates

Jan 2013 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by Christine Williams

About this audiobook

Dinah Whitcomb seemingly has everything—a loving and successful husband, and a smart, precocious young son named Robbie—until one day, their worlds are shattered when Dinah is attacked and Robbie is abducted from a mall parking lot. As Dinah recovers from her wounds, she struggles to come to terms with her new reality and to keep her marriage afloat. Though it seems hopeless, she retains a flicker of hope that her son is still alive.
 
The kidnapper, a part-time preacher named Chester Cash, calls himself Daddy Love: he has abducted, tortured, and raped several young boys, indoctrinating them into becoming both his lover and his “son.” He renames Robbie “Gideon,” slowly brainwashing him into believing that he is Daddy Love’s real son. Any time the boy resists or rebels, he faces punishment beyond his wildest nightmares.
 
As Robbie grows older, he begins to realize that the longer he stays in the home of this demon, the greater the chance that he’ll end up like Daddy Love’s other “sons” who were never heard from again. Somewhere within this tortured young boy lies a spark of rebellion, and soon he sees just what lengths he must go to in order to have any chance at survival.

About the author

Joyce Carol Oates is the author of such national bestsellers as The Falls, Blonde, and We Were the Mulvaneys. Her other titles for The Mysterious Press include DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense, The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror; and Jack of Spades.