The Parent War is book one of author Jeff Bond's literary series, Franklin.The Glassers and Merritts have been best friends, linchpins of the neighborhood, since their first playdate nearly a decade ago.Not anymore.Rick and Val Glasser have too much going. Rick is ready to leave behind stay-at-home fatherdom to launch Tramp Bar, a combination trampoline park-brewpub. Val is a pharmaceutical rep to Franklin's beloved NFL team, the Federals, on whom she's been known to lay a wager. Their balance sheet stretched to the breaking point, the Glassers can't afford it when their youngest, Reid, starts getting sent home from kindergarten for fighting and "insufficient focus." As Rick juggles a new business with kid problems galore, he begins to wonder if their hands-off parenting style is coming home to roost.
Booker and Hope Merritt live for their children. Hope homeschools, and Booker makes three hours every week, without fail, for both bright Lydia and sensitive Booker Junior. The children are thriving, Lydia a rising (if high-strung) art prodigy, Junior reading four levels above grade level. But when Booker-younger by several years than Hope, Rick, and Val-begins to chafe at their regimented life, Hope worries the marriage isn't built to last.The two families' kids have always gotten along marvelously despite these opposite approaches, but when this harmony breaks-the younger kids picking at each other over some secret none of them will divulge-the parents are at a loss.What happened? Did theirs corrupt ours? Is there some deeper reason that one's always been so quiet?As Reid's kindergarten trainwreck continues and expenses from Tramp Bar balloon, and those perfectly-honed paths the Merritts imagined for their children quaver¿can the families' bond endure? Or will their divergent values finally prove impossible to overcome?Welcome to Franklin: a city in full. Grace and pettiness, ambition, despair. Threats.
Hunger. Heroism. Six sorts of love. More children every day. The NFL's Franklin Federals-Go Feds! The roaring Shawnee, which never floods Franklin Heights but routinely devastates the Falls side.You've passed through before, reader. Now come a bit farther off the interstate.