Father and Son

The PriVILEged is narrated by Dr. Billie Miles. Billie personifies all that I'd hoped to become as a therapist working with youth and families over the course of decades. He's definitely a weathered man who'd thought he'd seen it all and so I wanted to offer a fresh reminder to him and my readers that when it came to studying human behavior it's simply not possible to see it all. 

I take you back to Billie's beginnings in Mississippi and fast forward you to the point where he is an eighty year-old black psychologist living in Colorado as Matty's shrink.  Billie grew up with B.B. King in the same town of Itta Bene, Mississippi.  Both of them grew up on the farm, barely made a decent wage, participated in the Sunday choir, and both got the hell out of Mississippi before dying of a heatstroke. 

Billie fell out of love with his home after the KKK murdered his father and son in a tragic accident. Looking back, I probably recreated the story of father and son to emulate the Catholic tradition of In the name of the Father and the son...Billie is surely anything but holy but his life has purpose as he seeks redemption for his son's death by offering Matty all the things he couldn't offer his son.