Their Child

In the quiet terror of parenthood, Mr. and Mrs. Simmons watch their young son with mounting dread. Robert Herrick's forgotten masterpiece dissects the paralyzing anxiety of watching, waiting, and wondering whether love can shape what nature has already begun to carve. Every gesture the boy makes becomes evidence. Every whim carries weight. Have they created a monster, or merely imagined one? Herrick writes with surgical precision about the way parental fear can become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, as the parents' obsessive attention to their son's every flaw begins to warp the very child they desperately want to protect. This is psychological realism at its most uncomfortable: a novel that asks whether we see our children clearly, or only our fears reflected back at us. A century before helicopter parenting entered the lexicon, Herrick captured its quiet horror.