Saint Gredible and Her Fat Dad's Mass

Gretty has more clutching at her just her mother's ashes. Her legacy includes a mess of stories that continue to grow and tangle. These come from grandfathers who survived the Holocaust and from parents who didn't. They are woven by living cultures and killing trauma so much deeper and older. 

• Born deaf and on the spectrum, it's a challenge not to be eccentric.
• Knowing her parents didn't want her, it's a struggle not to surrender to sadness. 
• Alive and full of fight, it's impossible not to be ferocious.

Gretty's parents came together at The Dakota in the aftermath of the Lennon assassination. Because of their family backgrounds, they never wanted children until, much later, she changed her mind. Gretty's mother's passion was preventing future Holocausts, and creating a child means vulnerability. 

The novel opens in the aftermath of a grandfather's death. There are flashbacks of "Obby" reading and writing strange children's stories with much help from his granddaughter and Fat Abe, his son. As Abe (Avram) cleans out Obby's house, they are visited by Gretty's maternal grandfather, a man who survived and thrives (materially) at any cost. Much earlier, Gretty's mom had died a death of despair: confronting how this dad had "collaborated" with the Nazi's.

"Fat Dad" is Abey is an eccentric depressive. To survive he generates enthusiasms quite unseemly for one charged with raising a motherless child. His preoccupation is his own fabricated religion: Chelonialism which exalts creativity in avatars like Coltrane and the Beatles. Beneath his antics, Abe might be more obsessed with Nazis than was his dead wife. It's 2017, a new president has been "elected" who many fear is sending dogwhistles to fascists. Though Abe is reluctant to be too "active" (partly because of his obesity), he feels compelled to join a large protest on the Boston Common where, in a tragicomic turn of events, he is accosted by ANTIFA's who accuse him of being a Nazi. On a hot August day, that proves too much for poor Abey.

Gretty is left an orphan in the care of family friends. But her parents never leave her. Possessed by their memories and her compulsions she begins to explore her own creativity as she strives to make meaning of both her legacies and prospects.

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