Eddie's Bastard

Billy was deposited as an infant on the doorstep of Thomas Mann's home in a simple wicker basket with a plain two-word message pinned to his shawl reading 'Eddie's Bastard' Eddie, Thomas' son, had been killed in Vietnam three months earlier and his father had given up on life, having lost his only son. But now, suddenly, Thomas has a grandson and an heir - if not to the once vast Mann fortune, ( for Thomas recklessly squandered that in a foolhardy enterprise involving ostriches just after his heroic return from WWII), then at least to the long legacy of the Mann family stories, stretching back to the Civil War.