Tag: Cathead Crazy

Review: ‘Cathead Crazy’ by Rhett Devane

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn fiction, reviews1 Comment

“All she wanted in this life was a small slice of peace. Maybe add in some attention from her husband. Respect from her kids. A clean house. But she’d settle for peace.” – Rhett DeVane in “Cathead Crazy.”

Hannah Olsen wears multiple hats, and their combined weight is well-known to any woman who has done a portion of her life as a member of the sandwich generation stuck like thin cheese between an aging parent and demanding children. She has a full-time job, a household with a husband and kids to look after, and an ever-changeable mother called Ma-Mae at a nearby nursing home who needs and expects her dutiful daughter to be present around the clock.

In “Cathead Crazy,” Rhett DeVane tells Hannah’s story with grace, sweet-and-sour reality, humor during hard times, and a heaping helping of the down-home Florida Panhandle lifestyle. Immensely readable, this novel is about a family caught in the crosshairs of the difficult choices everyone with aging parents will ultimately face. Even so, there are still good days, laughter and memories that will serve well for a lifetime.

Rhett DeVane knows the territory, and she has made of it a moving story with realistic, multidimensional characters with universal cares and needs who try their best to navigate life without going “cathead crazy.”

The eight recipes, including “Ma-Mae’s Buttermilk Cathead Biscuits,” are a mouthwatering extra treat. Would you like sweet tea with your lunch, hon?

— Malcolm

Author of four novels, Malcolm R. Campbell grew up in the Florida Panhandle where this novel is set, and thoroughly enjoyed seeing it again through Rhett DeVane’s wide-angle lens even though he never learned to like sugar in his iced tea. His novel, “Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey” is partially set in Tallahassee, Carrabelle, Tate’s Hell and other areas very close to Hannah Olsen’s neck of the piney woods.

Upcoming book reviews

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn fiction, writing2 Comments

I’ve got my work cut out for me with Philip Lee Williams’ huge new novel The Divine Comics: A Vaudeville Show in Three Acts. It’s a 1,000+ page, two-inch thick novel from an award-winning Georgia author. However, I’m really looking forward to this one. I’ve previously enjoyed his poetry in Elegies for the Water, his natural history about the ridge he calls home in In the Morning, and his civil war novel  A Distant Flame. Williams, who is also a composer of classical music, recently retired from the  University of Georgia.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Williams several times at our local library when he was on tour.

I’m also looking forward to Rhett DeVane’s new novel Cathead Crazy. She wrote a guest post about the novel’s background here on March 12. I’ve started reading the book—it’s great. I’m not surprised. I liked Rhett’s Evenings on Dark Island, co-written with Larry Rock. What a great vampire spoof that was. While Rhett lives in Tallahassee, Florida, the town where I grew up, I’ve never met her. She needs to do a book tour into the Northeast Georgia region where we also happen to like large biscuits.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading and enjoying Lynne Sears Williams wonderful novel about the long-ago days in the country now known as Wales. I’ll be talking more about The Comrades on this blog very soon.

Meanwhile, I’m busy keeping up with my Book Bits blog (writer’s links) while working on short stories. (I’m not yet ready to tackle another book-length story.) And then, too, the website has undergone a major overhaul lately. That can happen when you switch the domain from one ISP to another.

The weather’s heating up in northeast Georgia, the grass is growing faster than I like, pollen is covering the cars, the cats are constantly miaowing about something, and I’m starting to think I’m ready for a vacation.

Malcolm

The Sandwich Generation

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books4 Comments

Today’s guest post is by Rhett DeVane, author of “Mama’s Comfort Food,” “Evenings on Dark Island” (with Larry Rock), and “Accidental Ambition” (with  Robert W. McKnight). Her new novel “Cathead Crazy”  is the “story of one woman’s determined journey through love, loss, and the surprises of mid-life.” Rhett’s post gives us a glimpse of the realities and inspiration behind the novel.

The Sandwich Generation

Over 10 million Americans are part of the “sandwich generation,” caring for both children and elderly family members. This group falls between ages 34-54, and are of all cultures and ethnicities. Caretaking brings a crash course in legal and financial matters, difficult medical decisions, and questions about housing. Add to that, finding time for the caretaker to rejuvenate before his or her own health and relationships suffer. Wow.

As the years pass, I realize what a charmed childhood I led— raised in the gentle rolling hills of North Florida with two outstanding parents, fresh air and homegrown vegetables, and always more than enough dogs, cats, chickens, and the occasional rescued tortoise, squirrel, or rabbit. My parents were my my biggest cheerleaders, especially my mom. As she put it, I served as “her caboose,” until her later years when I became “her engine.” After my father’s death at 79, Mom stayed in that big farmhouse on Bonnie Hill until her late 80s, when she decided to move close to my home in Tallahassee.

My brother lived a few towns distant, and my sister in Tennessee, so I became the go-to, go-get, go-crazy girl. The one who gets called at 2 a.m. when the ambulance is on the way. The one who dries tears. The one who occasionally thinks of steering her car one-way out of town and not leaving a bread trail.

Mom and I did the typical “girly” things: we shopped, enjoyed the monthly mani-pedi, tried new local eateries, and gossiped on the front porch. I got caught up in the goings-on at her assisted living facility and never visited that I didn’t end up laughing, or at least in a much better mood. It wasn’t all nirvana; there were times when we stomped all over each other’s last nerve. We kissed and made up, then pressed on.

Cathead Crazy follows one woman’s similar bumpy journey. But it could be anyone’s. The anecdotes are based on truth, either personal or those shared with me. Though Mae has many of my mother’s traits, Hannah’s mother is much more cantankerous. Nor did I have two teenaged kids to add to the mix. Fiction demands drama, so I went all-out to torment Hannah. Poor dear.

In our reality, my family faced the sudden death of my sister Melody, six months before my mother “left for Home.” Both women are reportedly doing well on the Other Side (as my brother and I have been shown in dreams); my mother drives a bakery food truck and my sister sings to those nearing death. They stay busy. No huge surprise.

The draft for Cathead Crazy idled in my computer’s hard drive for over two years before I could bring myself to revisit it. And how grateful I felt that I written it as I rowed my leaky caretaker canoe upstream. The memories flooded back, and I healed as I slugged through the revisions.

I think Mama D would be proud. She’d say, “Sugar, this one’s a keeper.”

Cathead Crazy Launch Party

While paperback and Kindle editions of Cathead Crazy are already available on on Amazon, the party is yet to come. If you’re in Tallahassee, Florida on April 26, stop by the Mockingbird Cafe from 5:30 till 8:00 pm to meet Rhett and enjoy the excitement that’s part of the official launch of a new book.

“This one will make you smile, make your eyes leak, and make you want to rush to the kitchen to bake a batch of fresh ‘catheads.'” – Rhett DeVane