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Hastings' Dead
What's a guy to do when people don't see things his way?
“Hastings’ Dead” is set in a small Michigan town, where a University of Michigan student, Range Goloso, has promised her father she’ll return to teach grade school.
In college Range falls in love with Ben Adler, a New York based law student who can’t very well start a lucrative practice without a substantial client base. She defends a local artist accused of pushing his girlfriend off the church bell tower when she wanted to leave town. Actually Range is upholding her town’s reputation and realizes her dreams of settling down in Hastings might be dead.
“Hastings’ Dead” is set in a small Michigan town, where a University of Michigan student, Range Goloso, has promised her father she’ll return to teach grade school.
In college Range falls in love with Ben Adler, a New York based law student who can’t very well start a lucrative practice without a substantial client base. She defends a local artist accused of pushing his girlfriend off the church bell tower when she wanted to leave town. Actually Range is upholding her town’s reputation and realizes her dreams of settling down in Hastings might be dead.
126 pages, Paperback
Published November 10, 2015
255 people want to read
About the author
Rohn Federbush
18 books207 followersMotivations for my Novels.
My husband says I need to practice talking about my books, not the content but how I came up with the ideas. So here goes, as far as I remember. I’ve always written. When I was a full-time employee of the University of Michigan, I couldn’t wait until I retired to write all day. I thought I would be published by a traditional publisher by now. I’ve finished more than fifteen novels and two novellas. After buying three filing cabinets and FILLING them with rejection slips for my poetry, short stories, and novels. I decided to self-publish.
The first novel was “Salome’s Conversion.” I never liked Oscar Wilde’s seduction rendition or the death scene in the Strauss opera where the soldiers kill the dancer by plummeting her with their shields. According to Josephus’s history, Salome was merely twelve or thirteen when she danced at her mother’s request for her step-father. Claiming her innocence, I decided to write about her escape from Herod and where she might have taken refuge during the three years our Savior, Jesus Christ walked the earth. In my King James Version the authors move around the miracles to suit their tastes. I did the same. I also made Mary Magdalene the Mary, whose brother was Lazarus. Salome doubts all the miracles until the Resurrection.
Then I published three historicals. As a member of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church’s history group, I was able to take advantage of their access to the Bentley Library. Diaries of members and the general populations have abstracts to choose from. The biggest donor to the church also became the first president of Michigan’s History Society. It seems he was innocent of a larceny charge and took it all the way to the Supreme Court to prove he was free of any wrong doing. Apparently he wanted future generations to be aware of his struggle. However, when he was only thirteen, he attended the Maumee Rapids Treaty signing, which gave President Monroe enough land from the Indians to build the Erie Canal. The treaty with all the names of the seven tribes around the Great Lakes in 1818 is kept in the Ann Arbor District library. So I wrote “North Parish” to reconstruct the trip around the lakes to acquire consensus for attendance at the treaty signing. Of course, I wrote about a young couple that falls in love with each other during the voyages.
My 1841 novel “Floating Home” was inspired by a lighthouse keeper’s diary. He had propagated seven children before his Ann Arbor wife sent him off to man a lighthouse in Lake Superior. The diary contained descriptions of his lonely hours and daily tasks as well as a detailed drawing of a large wooden globe and its rotating stand. For my hero’s heroine I chose an Irish gal escaping the potato famine. The young nobleman is an artist and wants the lonely habitat to fulfill his dreams of being an artist.
The 1879 novel “Love’s Triumph” came from reading a biography of a man called Vaughn who funds scholarships for chemistry students at the University. I use him as a well-documented villain of Ann Arbor’s typhoid epidemic. For the heroine I conjured up the second female lawyer in Ann Arbor living with her Civil War veteran grandfather. Her hero is the oldest son of a furniture maker who loses most of his family to the disease.
Agatha Christy and Elizabeth George books tempted me to try my hand at mystery writing. “Sally Bianco Mystery Series” contains four different crimes and their solutions by a sixty-nine year old retired lady.
“Bonds of Affection” combines the female race-car driver who lived in an apartment across the hall from me in my younger days with my mother’s loss from cancer and a pair of high school twins who fill out the romance'sstory line.
My husband says I need to practice talking about my books, not the content but how I came up with the ideas. So here goes, as far as I remember. I’ve always written. When I was a full-time employee of the University of Michigan, I couldn’t wait until I retired to write all day. I thought I would be published by a traditional publisher by now. I’ve finished more than fifteen novels and two novellas. After buying three filing cabinets and FILLING them with rejection slips for my poetry, short stories, and novels. I decided to self-publish.
The first novel was “Salome’s Conversion.” I never liked Oscar Wilde’s seduction rendition or the death scene in the Strauss opera where the soldiers kill the dancer by plummeting her with their shields. According to Josephus’s history, Salome was merely twelve or thirteen when she danced at her mother’s request for her step-father. Claiming her innocence, I decided to write about her escape from Herod and where she might have taken refuge during the three years our Savior, Jesus Christ walked the earth. In my King James Version the authors move around the miracles to suit their tastes. I did the same. I also made Mary Magdalene the Mary, whose brother was Lazarus. Salome doubts all the miracles until the Resurrection.
Then I published three historicals. As a member of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church’s history group, I was able to take advantage of their access to the Bentley Library. Diaries of members and the general populations have abstracts to choose from. The biggest donor to the church also became the first president of Michigan’s History Society. It seems he was innocent of a larceny charge and took it all the way to the Supreme Court to prove he was free of any wrong doing. Apparently he wanted future generations to be aware of his struggle. However, when he was only thirteen, he attended the Maumee Rapids Treaty signing, which gave President Monroe enough land from the Indians to build the Erie Canal. The treaty with all the names of the seven tribes around the Great Lakes in 1818 is kept in the Ann Arbor District library. So I wrote “North Parish” to reconstruct the trip around the lakes to acquire consensus for attendance at the treaty signing. Of course, I wrote about a young couple that falls in love with each other during the voyages.
My 1841 novel “Floating Home” was inspired by a lighthouse keeper’s diary. He had propagated seven children before his Ann Arbor wife sent him off to man a lighthouse in Lake Superior. The diary contained descriptions of his lonely hours and daily tasks as well as a detailed drawing of a large wooden globe and its rotating stand. For my hero’s heroine I chose an Irish gal escaping the potato famine. The young nobleman is an artist and wants the lonely habitat to fulfill his dreams of being an artist.
The 1879 novel “Love’s Triumph” came from reading a biography of a man called Vaughn who funds scholarships for chemistry students at the University. I use him as a well-documented villain of Ann Arbor’s typhoid epidemic. For the heroine I conjured up the second female lawyer in Ann Arbor living with her Civil War veteran grandfather. Her hero is the oldest son of a furniture maker who loses most of his family to the disease.
Agatha Christy and Elizabeth George books tempted me to try my hand at mystery writing. “Sally Bianco Mystery Series” contains four different crimes and their solutions by a sixty-nine year old retired lady.
“Bonds of Affection” combines the female race-car driver who lived in an apartment across the hall from me in my younger days with my mother’s loss from cancer and a pair of high school twins who fill out the romance'sstory line.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 29, 2016
Hastings’ Dead by Rohn Federbush takes place in Michigan and the main characters attend the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor…GO BLUE. I hail from Michigan and root for the Wolverines during football season, so I was happy to spend some time in the small town of Hastings.
The villain is exposed from the very beginning, and boy is he messed up. I can almost feel sorry for him.
David wanted to stay in Hastings and Diane wanted to stretch her wings and fly. Well…
Arancia, nicknamed Range, and Ben, her boyfriend, attend the University of Michigan, but head to Hastings, Arancia’s home, for the Christmas holidays. She missed her small home town and planned to return there after college to teach. Ben wanted the big city life, where a lawyer can make a name for himself.
Problems arise immediately, but Range refuses to acknowledge them. I had a problem with Range. She ignores what her instincts are telling her. Is she just naive? Or is there more to the story?
Her brother, Coco is quite the character and I love his feisty personality. He could understand Ben better than Range, because he felt the same way. Until…
Hastings’ Dead reads like a cozy mystery. If anyone is the hero, it will be Range, but the peripheral characters supply a large part of the entertainment and contribute their problem solving to the story.
There was even a laugh or two and I loved when the brides to be made their grand entrance for the wedding. Very nice touch and it still puts a smile on my face as I write this.
I had some trouble with the writing, especially when dealing with Range. I didn’t like her very much and could not figure out what she was thinking. Was everything tainted by her need to live in Hastings? Well…the end was not what I thought and that is always a good thing and I enjoyed it. I really wanted more depth to the story, but Rohn Federbush threw in a twist or two to keep the story lively. If you like a quick read, murders to solve, and some romance, Hastings’ Dead could be for you.
“Since when is love a bad thing.”
“When demands snuff out freedom.”
I received a copy of Hastings’ Dead by Rohn Federbush in return for an honest review.
To see more visit http://www.fundinmental.com
The villain is exposed from the very beginning, and boy is he messed up. I can almost feel sorry for him.
David wanted to stay in Hastings and Diane wanted to stretch her wings and fly. Well…
Arancia, nicknamed Range, and Ben, her boyfriend, attend the University of Michigan, but head to Hastings, Arancia’s home, for the Christmas holidays. She missed her small home town and planned to return there after college to teach. Ben wanted the big city life, where a lawyer can make a name for himself.
Problems arise immediately, but Range refuses to acknowledge them. I had a problem with Range. She ignores what her instincts are telling her. Is she just naive? Or is there more to the story?
Her brother, Coco is quite the character and I love his feisty personality. He could understand Ben better than Range, because he felt the same way. Until…
Hastings’ Dead reads like a cozy mystery. If anyone is the hero, it will be Range, but the peripheral characters supply a large part of the entertainment and contribute their problem solving to the story.
There was even a laugh or two and I loved when the brides to be made their grand entrance for the wedding. Very nice touch and it still puts a smile on my face as I write this.
I had some trouble with the writing, especially when dealing with Range. I didn’t like her very much and could not figure out what she was thinking. Was everything tainted by her need to live in Hastings? Well…the end was not what I thought and that is always a good thing and I enjoyed it. I really wanted more depth to the story, but Rohn Federbush threw in a twist or two to keep the story lively. If you like a quick read, murders to solve, and some romance, Hastings’ Dead could be for you.
“Since when is love a bad thing.”
“When demands snuff out freedom.”
I received a copy of Hastings’ Dead by Rohn Federbush in return for an honest review.
To see more visit http://www.fundinmental.com
Displaying 1 of 1 review