The Boy Who Loved Dean Smith

About the Book

“By the time you read this I might be dead.” So begins Dr. Warren Blake, the principle narrator of The Boy Who Loved Dean Smith. Blake is the father of Brad Blake, and he recounts his intense love for his wife and young son, and his growing cynicism, from his cell in Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina. The father’s sometimes bitter humor is balanced by a second voice, that of the ebullient Brad, speaking through his secret diary.

Violence in America is the backdrop for this story about a child prodigy who has a particularly virulent form of cystic fibrosis, and his father, a molecular biologist, who struggles frantically to discover a way to save his son before it’s too late. One of the most dedicated scientists in America, Warren Blake is nevertheless passive in his personal life; he describes his life as one of “quiet desperation.”

He is drawn to Linda as if by fate, and they fall in love almost at first sight. When Brad is born, they are ecstatic and make plans for his future. Gradually, though, they realize that Bradley is different from most youngsters. Sickly—yet extremely intelligent—Brad is so special that his mom and dad are even more devoted than most parents. But when doctors at Duke Medical Center diagnose Brad as suffering from cystic fibrosis, their world spins wildly out of orbit.

Warren Blake refuses to accept that Brad may have only a few years to live. He vows to work day and night to find a cure for Brad’s illness. When scientists, working as part of the Human Genome Project, locate the gene for Brad’s disease, Blake hopes and works against all odds that genetic engineering techniques will soon become the tool to save his son. Blake focuses his research on discovering ways to deliver healthy genes into his son’s lungs.

Linda and Warren try to keep Brad’s mind off his illness by taking educational trips, including a visit to the home of Eudora Welty in Mississippi. And because Bradley loves Carolina basketball more than anything else, father and son frequently play guessing games about Tar Heel sports. The parents arrange for Brad to visit Chapel Hill and the Deandome as often as possible, and when UNC basketball coach Dean Smith visits the young boy, Brad is overwhelmed with emotion.

Meanwhile, Warren Blake’s world begins to come apart. His father dies. The stress of taking care of Brad by herself causes Linda to doubt her husband and their marriage. Worst of all, animal rights zealots break into Warren’s lab and destroy all his research. It appears that his efforts to save Brad have been wasted by what he considers the mindless violence of extremists.

Blake seeks revenge on one of the leaders of the animal rights group and plots to kill James O’Connell by injecting him with the AIDS virus. When O’ Connell suspects that he is being set up, he pushes the barrel of his .38 revolver into Warren Blake’s face, ready to fire.

Although O’Connell eventually kills himself, Warren Blake is tried as “that godless scientist” who experiments on people’s genes. He is convicted and sent to prison. Blake accepts that he’s morally responsible for O’Connell’s death, but he blames the guilty verdict on the public’s ignorance and distrust of science.

While in prison, Blake works over the Internet to infiltrate a secret network of scientists concerned about the increase of mindless violence in America, especially the violence of young people. Together they devise a clandestine plan utilizing genetic engineering techniques to neutralize the so-called violence genes. The scientists realize that eugenics has been practiced many times before, even in America—often with disastrous consequences—but they forge ahead with their efforts to alter forever the human genome.

The ending of The Boy Who Loved Dean Smith will shock and surprise you, le

About the Author

Phillip L. Owens graduated from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and has a PhD in English from the University of North Carolina in Greensboro. He has taught literature and writing at Elon College and Alamance Community College near Burlington, North Carolina. Currently he works as writer and editor, and in electronic marketing. His wife June teaches at Haw River Elementary School, and their son Brandon lives in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina.