FATHER'S NAME

A letter arrives at a federal prison with one question in Arabic: What was my son's name to you? James Calder is six years into a life sentence for the murder of a CIA officer. He sat in an Arlington hotel lobby, blood on his cuff, and confessed. He has not spoken since. Then the letter comes. No return address. A father who will not stop asking. In 2014, in Sana'a, schoolteacher Nasser al-Rahim watched his seventeen-year-old son take a "translation" job from an American called Michael Reed. Yusuf liked mathematics. He was a poor liar. A night operation in al-Hasaba followed. The two stories are the same story. Federal defender Elena Voss inherits a thin case and a client who turned silence into a cathedral. A dying father in McLean still teaches the family method. A contractor still sells the government back its own hunger. And a sister in Falls Church has been building a file while the quiet man sat in a box. FATHER'S NAME is a dual-timeline literary thriller of U.S. prisons and Yemeni kitchens, cables and courtrooms-about the names we give, the names we take, and the ones we try to forget. Political intrigue. Family reckoning. A confession that was never the whole truth.