The Haunted Refrigerator: Bifurcated Proceedings

by Dave Veith

Overview

“What happened, Unca Dave?” Young people today deserve an answer. To restate our hypothesis: on November 4 1953, Theodore F. Schism climbed into his mother’s defrosting refrigerator and shut the door. He was 9 years old. The first book of his story was appropriately called In. Now comes the middle, the “unloved child,” and yet its pages introduce the villain of the piece, a role which by definition is far more interesting than that of any so-called hero. As for getting … out? Young Theo might succeed, or maybe not. Looked at in that way, his is the only hope we have. So start with In, or don’t and take your chances. Bifurcated Proceedings are just that, a lucky break for all of us, so how bad can it be? And if you need fortification, you can always Hoist a Few Cold Ones: Book Three.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781728346571
Publisher:	AuthorHouse
Publication date:	02/28/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	608
File size:	975 KB

About the Author

Dave Veith is retired and lives with his wife in Northern California. They have four children and three grandchildren.

Editorial Reviews

2020-09-09
This second installment of a fiction trilogy continues to follow a family over the course of decades.

The Schism family went their separate ways after a young one’s death in the 1950s. Daughter Isabel ultimately had a daughter of her own, Abra Cadabra “Snap” Weaver. Snap’s (likely) father, Leif Lambrochet, left for the Army, where he stayed for 35 years before retiring. He subsequently gets a security job at Null Data Corporation, the San Francisco tech company from which Leif’s sister, Clare, recently retired. The company, founded by Jay Null, a man the siblings knew years ago as John Knot, has its share of problems. In one instance, Leif and a co-worker discover a hanging body in a conference room. Federal agent Norman Vernon investigates this apparent suicide as a murder and interrogates Leif as a suspect. Around the same time, numerous current and former employees file a lawsuit against NDC and insurance companies over retirement funds that are suffering financial losses. While much of this narrative unfolds in “the Oughts,” some characters revisit the past, including Clare, who reads entries from her personal journal, and Isabel, who peruses her father George’s memoirs and manuscripts. As in the preceding volume, Veith fills the pages with vivid characters and stories. For example, there’s mysterious NDC business analyst Henderson, whose first name is “N/A” in company paperwork. And while the novel is methodically paced, myriad happenings keep it free of lulls, from so-called Black Monday (a series of NDC firings in 1988) to Snap’s encounter with nasty parasites in Paraguay during a stint in the Peace Corps. The author skillfully and comprehensively maneuvers the gripping narrative through ever changing time periods, though he concentrates the bulk of the story on Leif and Clare. Discussions and emails about the impending lawsuit dominate the tale in the final act.

A riveting family melodrama.

Kirkus Reviews