Finalist for the 2024 Vine National Canadian Jewish Book Awards

“With generous storytelling, and biblical allusions… With a touch of Mordecai Richler and notes of F. Scott Fitzgerald…Large in scope, intimate in tone…”
– From the Jury Citation

A story about class, power, character, and growing up….

In the late 1970s, at a boys’ prestigious private school in Montreal, the son of a billionaire chooses the son of a construction worker for his tag football team. As Sean McFall gets to know golden-haired David Goldberg and his larger-than-life father, Saul, he is dazzled by the family’s riches, power, and ease in social situations. The bright lives of the Goldbergs are profoundly different from those of Sean’s working-class parents.

But as Sean grows up and is pulled closer to the centre of the Goldberg family by the gravitational force of their wealth and position, he discovers a tyrannical and abusive patriarch, an estranged relative bent on revenge, and dark family secrets.

As he struggles to reconcile his first impressions with the realities he later confronts, Sean must determine who he is, what he will stand for, and whether he can resist the attraction that has dominated his life.

Rich in understanding of the relationships between parents and children, the loyalty we show our friends, and how a family’s past haunts its present, The Great Goldbergs is about the compromises we make in pursuit of wealth and acceptance, and for love...

What readers are saying:

“An absolutely beautiful book that reads like a combination of Mordechai Richler meets JD Salinger, with undertones of F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Irving.”

“The story in many ways invokes The Godfather, told from the point of view of the consigliere.”

“A speculation on the interplay of destiny and choice, told in the first person by an insider who maintains just enough distance to be a believable observer.”

“It is a portrait of power and wealth, unspoken notions of masculinity, the assumptions of the entitled….A timely novel, so glad I read it.”

“Consumed it in 4 days because I was so drawn into its characters and world.”

“The novel is measured in tone, matching the slow, incremental revelations of deceit, and lending even greater impact to the consequences of Goldberg’s ruthlessness. Daniel Goodwin clearly evokes Shakespeare’s warning to look beneath the surface of all that glitters.”

“Daniel Goodwin’s full authorial register is on display in his most recent novel, The Great Goldbergs. He has an acute gift for reproducing the complicated emotional connective tissue between boys and their fathers, brothers and pals. He can deliver the kind of well-timed, deadpan humor on a page that stand-up comics kill for on a stage. He blends literary allusions into key scenes — not to show off but rather to breathe smoothly intoxicating lushness into his narrative.”

“This is a story of a good man gradually surrendering to the moral and emotional corruption of a quest for power and the desire to be part of something bigger. Read The Great Goldbergs for the emotional journey. Read it for the gently seductive prose. But most of all, read it as a morality tale of ambition and the craving to belong.”

“The Great Goldbergs is a superb book. In it, we time travel with Sean McFall beginning as a child of modest means on his decades-long odyssey with the Goldberg family and its business empire. Goodwin deftly, slowly peels back the onion to reveal that the Goldbergs are not great as he had once thought – to put it mildly. McFall’s disillusionment and subsequent self-reckoning reinforces important life lessons for us all about human values. Compelling and at times shocking, this is a modern classic.”

Human-only writing:

This writing on this website is completely ChatGPT-free and will always remains so. I’ve written two opinion pieces about machine writing:

The first one is “Why would we want to outsource being human to a machine?” and ran in The Toronto Star.

The second one is “Here’s why all AI writing should carry a label” and ran in The Ottawa Citizen.

Blog and poetry:

If you’re interested in occasional musings on miscellaneous topics, sometimes literary, you can check out my blog. Or if you like poetry, I sometimes post poems on my poetry tab. My latest is a poem called “Poets’ Corner” about coming across a homeless couple sleeping in the shadow of an ATM.