Robert Olmstead knows why his novels – including the new Coal Black Horse – feature fathers, sons, and the connection between them. “My dad was a drinker,” he says. “He taught me how to drive so I could drive him home.” Coal Black Horse centers on a 14-year-old boy whose mom asks him to bring home his father from the Civil War. She gives him a special coat — which is blue on one side and gray on the other — to wear on his journey to the battlefield. “Mothers have been sending sons out to look for fathers forever,” says Olmstead, a professor at Ohio Wesleyan University. “I just can’t seem to stop writing these kinds of stories.”
Tue., May 15, 7 p.m.

This article appears in May 9-15, 2007.