Connor Flynn didn’t get along with his father. Their battles weren’t about homework or dates, but about fundamental ethical issues. Once he was legally adult, Connor gave notice that he was old enough to chart his own life. But by that time his father’s teachings were already too deeply imbedded in his brain. Again and again his behavior reflected the beliefs from which he thought he’d freed himself. But in one decision he asserted his independence: marriage to a Jewish woman. His father, Michael, wholly set against accepting alien blood into the family, neither forgave nor forgot until it was too late. If anything validated his opposition — albeit for the wrong reason — it was his grandson Chris’s maternal inheritance, which no one, including Chris’s mother, predicted. In the end there was no winner; both father and son paid a steep price for their inability to reconcile.