The Grave Affair

by Russ Halford


Formats

Softcover
$12.95
Softcover
$12.95

Book Details

Language : English
Publication Date : 5/31/2000

Format : Softcover
Dimensions : 5x8
Page Count : 348
ISBN : 9781587211539

About the Book

In 1939 the tiny village of Haven, Wisconsin was like thousands of other villages in middle America. The Citizens were hard working, religious, their marriages lasted, and they paid their taxes, sent sons to war, and lived in what appeared to be total contentment. Hidden quietly beneath the surface of all this was a real potential for explosion. They were volatile without knowing it. The thing that would spark this volatility was any infringement of The Ten Commandments and anything at all having to do with sex.

This story tells about one such explosion.

This is a comedy, but only to the reader.

Haven, in this spring of 1939, is a visited by a sexual rumor that concerns one of their most stalwart citizens, the village jeweler who also happens to be the village's undertaker. His family has been this for several generations. He sings a weekly solo in church. He is a monument to virtue, or so it was thought before the rumor came.

The rumor involves his questionable behavior in his embalming shack and is started by a young woman of the village. It comes on the night her best friend, who has just died, is being embalmed: her imagination couples with her fear of dying early, and with the coupling she becomes terrified.

To ease this fright she enlists several female pals and they, of course, respond. The result is that they become united, made possible by a shattering truth they accidentally discover regarding the undertaker. Their pal...who is our heroine...fears molestation by the undertaker once she is dead. The gang's logic is that this can't possibly happen if our heroine becomes intimate with the undertaker, this intimacy making it impossible for him to be interested in the feared molestation.

'Once he sees all your pretty...well, then, he won't any longer have an interest,'' is their logic.

But our heroine rejects the idea. This triggers a kind of mass hysteria as all of her pals, to give her courage, offer to seduce the undertaker themselves. It is made clear that with their emotional support our heroine can carry out her seduction, since she is now part of a group dedicated to ridding Haven of a dangerous element.

This story involves the machinations, schemes, tricks, and maneuvers employed to accomplish these various seduction and , in particular, the built in psychological ramifications of such acts. Some of these women are married. All have reputations to uphold. And a couple have hidden, and highly amusing, quirks, which the village knows nothing about or even suspects.

The result, at least for the reader, is a joyous kind of madness.


About the Author

The author's professional life spans some 49 years (1950-1999). Prior to that three degrees were obtained, plus knicks and bruises from being a fighter pilot in World War II and a professional baseball player.

The first 20 professional years were focused on Photojournalism, working out of my studio in Hollywood. This work involved many, many assignments from Sports Illustrated and TV Guide, plus some for Life, Time, and a host of others, both national and international. This period found some writings, such as photographic book for Camera Craft Publishing, and a television drama, which was on the air, for Kraft Theater.

The second 20 years were focused on writing. Much of this period's work focused on the world of golf, which included coverage of professional golf, in particular features on the major players, and extensive world travel doing feature stories on major golf oriented resorts.

The remaining 10 years have focused on writing novels and the expansion of my painting interests, resulting in four finished novels and some 400 canvasses.