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Frequently compared to King Lear, Harris Sinclair, the patriarch of the family, rules it with an iron heart. Like Lear, Harris is accustomed to having the world bow before him, and he confuses power for love, ultimately losing both. His most notable characteristic is the one that is absent: tenderness. Despite being surrounded by his family in his retirement and old age, Harris does not share any loving kindness with his daughters or grandchildren. The closest he comes is moments of dark humor in which he threatens to give his fortune away in extravagant and frivolous ways. Many of Harris’s actions in the novel are implied rather than described, intimating the depth of his control over the Sinclair family. Only after he loses his wife, three of his grandchildren, and his vacation home does he display any softness. But even this emotion appears in the form of nostalgia, a sort of wistful longing for a past that never was, not in the loving embrace of what remains. In this sense, Cadence, as the eldest grandchild, seems to be in line to follow in his footsteps. However, the actions of the novel present another way forward, a chance to break with the sins of the past and create a new legacy going forward.
