Plenty of grownups spend their lives locked in mortal combat with their mothers and fathers, psychological shadow-boxing, flailing at specters and apparitions that linger from childhood conflicts long since irrelevant. For others, of course, the conflicts are real, and whether this is better or worse, more tractable or less, is hard to say.

Craig Nova's "The Good Son" is a story about just such a struggle, a real one between a father and his grown son. If there is something writ too large about their collision—their stubbornness one with the other, the contending passions each feels for making and having his own way—then perhaps the author is toying with allegory. He has tried to give flesh and substance to struggles that usually remain imprisoned in the psyche. By and large, his effort is successful….

Nova, who is the author of three earlier novels, is a thoughtful...