Jacob Sellars, a New York City newspaper reporter, is assigned to cover the memorial services for oil tycoon Joshua Crane, whose corporation has an ambiguous history and suspicious ties to U.S. intelligence agencies. Sellars, who is trying to come to grips with his own troubled past, seizes the chance to write a freelance article about the Crane family, one of New England's most venerated. In the process, Sellars develops an obsessive romance with Crane's granddaughter, a strident critic of the current administration's foreign policy in the Middle East. His investigations uncover the fact that Crane's company is being used as a front by the U.S. government for nefarious activities in oil-producing countries. Despite efforts to silence him, Sellars intends to publish a blockbuster story revealing the scheme. But he must first survive a beating by thuggish mercenaries, two horrifying terrorist attacks, and his own inner turmoil. Sellars's determination will be the deciding factor in whether he will escape with his life-and his heart-intact.
A masterful mix of high-level corruption, personal conflict, love and loss, "The Patriarch" is a vivid portrayal of the world for one American in the decade after the infamous terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.