Cold Air Return: A Novel

by Patrick Lawrence O'Keeffe

Overview

Eugene, at twelve, discovers that he can listen in on the grownups. A cold air return register in his bedroom, tied to ducts within the walls of his house, is a portal to the adult world around him. But that world puts severe demands on his innocence, suddenly forcing him to face concerns more mature than he is, and, ultimately, to confront the person within him. Cold Air Return is to be enjoyed on many levels. It is about tradition, prejudice, discovery, sex, and cultural values. The story explores who we are, probing the essence of family, camaraderie, community, love, and even baseball. Nancy Dunham, former non-fiction editor of The Heartland Today

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781933964133
Publisher:	Bottom Dog Press
Publication date:	03/01/2017
Series:	Harmony Fiction Series
Pages:	390
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.01(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Patrick Lawrence O Keeffe was born in Towanda, Pennsylvania, where he attended Saint Agnes School through the eighth grade. Raised on a dairy farm three miles west of Ulster, he was one of nine children in a family that also included three orphaned cousins. When he was a teenager, his parents sold their farm and relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area. O Keeffe studied for the priesthood under the Holy Cross Fathers

at the University of Notre Dame, where he received frequent encouragement from his teachers to become a writer.

Later embarking on a career in industrial fabrication, he lived in Indiana and Michigan, and finally settled near Akron, Ohio, where he and his wife, Karen, raised five children. They now reside close to Lake Erie, in Port Clinton. O Keeffe participates in activities of the Firelands Writing Center, and reads his work at the Center s monthly readings at Mr. Smith s Coffee House in Sandusky, Ohio. Along with poetry that has appeared in various journals, he has also contributed humorous essays to the South Bend Tribune, as well as book reviews for the Morrow County Sentinel.

In 2016, he authored and co-edited History of Ottawa County, The 1st 175 Years, a comprehensive work that tells the story, in photos and narrative, about the settling of one of the final frontiers in Ohio, which largely arose from the Great Black Swamp and the Lake Erie Islands. He is also the editor and publisher of the Scribbler, a monthly historical and literary paper for Ottawa County readers. Cold Air Return is O Keeffe s

first novel. He is currently at work on a second.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1, HASTY RECOVERY

1960 Melody Falls, Pennsylvania

On a hot, muggy afternoon, Grandma Marja was seen be working in her garden with no clothes.

Doctor Willingham had advised, When it gets too hot for you, go in and take a nap, Missus Ahern.

Sometimes she would do as he had said. More often, she would remove her clothes, put them aside and keep on hoeing.



For a while my parents were the only people in the whole of Wilmot County who didn t know that everybody else knew about it. And everybody did, thanks to Missus Tull.



Missus Tull s husband Oswald farmed the steep, rolling quarter section just north of us on the wrinkled eastern slope of Belknap Ridge. Since her somewhat early retirement as the fifth grade teacher from the Melody Falls Unified School District, Missus Tull had developed the practice of roaring over the township roads at a high rate of speed with no apparent destination in mind.

Passing our house, she suddenly slammed on the brakes and halted her blue 57 Rambler in a cloud of dust and flying gravel. Grandma peered at her a while through the split-rail fence, then waved, to which our neighbor responded with a scarlet-faced shriek, Hey! This is America! Get some clothes on!

Grandma did not care to be reminded that this was America. She d been here all of her adult life, and took Missus Tull s shriek to be a rude attempt to make her feel unwelcome. But she d learned long ago that the best defense in the face of such behavior was to pretend not to understand. So she smiled, shrugged her bare shoulders, and continued to nibble the edge of her hoe around the Swiss chard, ever so proud of her touch at raising greens.

But you can t do that! I later heard my father exclaim through the duct-work, his tone inflamed by our neighbor s incessant reports to the community about Grandma s full appreciation of fresh air. Missus Tull, after screaming at Grandma from the rolled down window of her Rambler, at last had found purpose for her formerly aimless forays behind the wheel: tell everyone who would listen and even some who wouldn t, or would rather not have that Marja Ahern did her gardening

in the nude. This tale for a time inspired a dusty increase in traffic to our otherwise out-of-the-way dirt road.



It s my garden, isn t it? Don t I always fold my clothes and place them in the tool shed? It s not like I leave them scattered around. And besides, Benjamin Franklin frequently took air baths too.



From my bedroom, I could listen to conversations below through a register in the wall.

Editorial Reviews

"Cold Air Return is a coming-of-age story that rings true from its first words. It is the summer of 1960 in north central Pennsylvania and twelve-year-old Eugene and his friends are on the cusp of adolescence. Cigarettes are smoked. Innocence collides with responsibility. The bonds of boyhood are tested by the dimly understood forces of race and class and religion. The first twinges of love are shadowed by an adult world where evil is real. O Keeffe builds his story deftly, each character drawn with knowledge and care. The climax is at once foreshadowed and unexpected, leaving our humanity exposed. I could not put this book down." Kurt Landefeld, author of Jack s Memoirs: Off the Road

From the Publisher