Growing up in his fathers looming shadow, Henry I. Schvey wondered if he was doomed to repeat the past, doomed to make the same mistakes his father made. Would he succumb to the drive for domination and transform his own world into one colored by fear, domestic violence, infidelity, and spousal abuse? Schvey grew up in New York as his father rose to the pinnacle of success in the Reagan era of dog-eat-dog global finance, eventually becoming Vice-President and Chairman of the Bond Funds Division at Merrill Lynch. But his fathers success was paid for with the currency of intimidation and he wore it with the braggadocio of a man with an outsized ego who didnt care who he stepped on to get to the topincluding his son. The Poison Tree is a study of Schveys relationship to his father, an illumination of the secret life of a man who was powerful, highly respected, and greatly feared, and a journeyboth sad and tragicomicthat ultimately leads to forgiveness.