Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Harlan Q. Stank has been living with the Hamiltons and working at their funeral parlor for four months, ever since his father, the Reverend Harlan P. Stank, kicked him out for his possession of religious doubts. The prodigal son returns when the body of Harlan O. Stank, Harlan Q's grandfather (who left the family twenty years previously, in 1952), turns up in the Hamiltons' funeral parlor and Harlan Q feels obliged to break the news. When Harlan O's bequest requires that he be buried in Las Vegas, Harlan Q, desperate for a glimpse of the high life, convinces his father that the Lord means him to go. Father, son, and deceased grandfather (in a coffin in the back) then depart Texas for Sin City, en route picking up an easygoing, alternatively spiritual young man called Warrior; in Vegas, Harlan Q learns things about the grandfather he never knew—and the father he thought he did. In her first novel, Hemphill catches the classic tone of the road-trip story, as confidences and life stories roll by along with the miles, and the possibilities open up with the horizon, and she never overplays her quirky, satirically touched humor and picturesque particularity. By overtly focusing the story on fathers and sons, the book relieves itself of the burden of being unobtrusive, so that Harlan Q can be keenly interested in Warrior's relationship with his own estranged father and with Harlan P; the "Long Gone Daddy" of the title is actually the name of Harlan O's Vegas [End Page 454] bar, taken from a Hank Williams song and summing up Harlan O's own history of parenting, with which Harlan Q's dad has never really come to terms. The colorful and comedic travel tale will draw a broad range of readers, while those dealing with their own parental friction will sympathize with Harlan Q's struggles.