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Separation Anxiety
Are paleontology museums perfect disposal sites for murdered victims? When two of her sorority sisters leave Ann Arbor for jobs in Chicago, Curtain Taylor never hears from them again. They've promised to be her bridesmaids. Curtain's fiancée, Cosmos Henderson, agrees with her concerns. The two young women have moved into a Chicago apartment where the mother of another sorority sister lived when she introduced her daughter to the landlord, Salvatore Bianco. Now the mother is missing too.
Paperback
First published June 30, 2015
5 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 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 6, 2015
Curtain Taylor entered college at age sixteen. Now she is working for her PhD. Her sorority sisters were beginning to move out of the house to pursue new jobs. Curtain was worried for them. They'd be going to a new city where they didn't know anyone. They all decide to meet with the man who owns the apartment building where they'll live. He seems nice enough but is he stalking Curtain?
I enjoyed this book for the most part. The story is one that can be told any number of ways. The writing is okay and the characters seem to have more than their fair share of quirks. I was also happy because this book starts in Michigan. Ann Arbor to be exact. It was an interesting tale.
I did find issues. The mystery in this book seems to take second place. The focus is on religion, not the characters. This book doesn't have a natural flow to it. It reads a little too formally and dry. Just when you think, now this book is going to take off, it shuts you down.
I gave this one 2 cheers out of 5 because of the issues above. ~Copy of book provided by author in exchange for a fair review~
I enjoyed this book for the most part. The story is one that can be told any number of ways. The writing is okay and the characters seem to have more than their fair share of quirks. I was also happy because this book starts in Michigan. Ann Arbor to be exact. It was an interesting tale.
I did find issues. The mystery in this book seems to take second place. The focus is on religion, not the characters. This book doesn't have a natural flow to it. It reads a little too formally and dry. Just when you think, now this book is going to take off, it shuts you down.
I gave this one 2 cheers out of 5 because of the issues above. ~Copy of book provided by author in exchange for a fair review~
October 18, 2015
Ms. Federbush has an interesting take on college life with her quirky characters.
Read full review in the 2015 October issue of InD'tale Magazine.
Read full review in the 2015 October issue of InD'tale Magazine.
December 2, 2015
Although Rohn Federbush's eighteenth book is categorized as "Suspense" and "Thriller," 'Separation Anxiety' fits squarely within Federbush's primary genre: Christian or Inspirational Fiction. Be warned: this isn't an adventure story, but a morality tale.
Curtain “Drape” Taylor is finishing her final months in college: defending her thesis—Drape is inexplicably graduating with a Ph.D. at age twenty, despite only having started college four years previously—and planning her imminent wedding to Cosmos, or “Sky.” Amidst Drape’s personal ups and downs, three of her friends have been mysteriously murdered following their move to Chicago apartments overseen by a mysterious older man. The mystery, however, is no real mystery, eliminating the thrill of discovery. Early on, when Federbush introduces Salvatore Bianco, she makes it clear--in, frankly, xenophobic terms--that he is the novel's villain: tellingly, when someone questions why a forty-year-old stranger is interested in caretaking two adult women, Drape's friend Stone only replies: "Oh, he'll be interested. I told you, he's Italian."
We can only assume that the implication is that Italian men are predatory, an unsettling conclusion for a young woman to reach, particularly in the 21st century. One of the major flaws of the novel is this kind of antiquated mindset, applied to a modern college student. The incongruity is too much; nothing about the narration is believable. Drape makes frequent, condescending remarks about "non-believers" and uses her Facebook for the purpose of posting daily quotes from her Bible. However, even beyond her not-so-subtle evangelical mission, Drape insistently condemns another population in a curiously old-fashioned mode: the mother who opts for in vitro fertilization. The premise is that Drape is traumatized by growing up without a father because she was conceived using IVF. Naturally, her traumatic responses take on an alarmingly sexist tone:
"For Drape, the meatloaf smells triggered childish fears of being in danger without a male in the house to protect her."
Even if we assume the best of Drape's--and, by extension, Federbush's--moral positioning, she is acknowledging the inferiority of women in their inability to defend themselves. It is difficult to ignore the social implications of 'Separation Anxiety,' but even if they went unremarked upon, the writing in 'Separation Anxiety' leaves something to be desired. Dialogue is remarkably inauthentic--each character, regardless of age, speaks in a stilted, formal manner, as if reciting each sentence onstage. Syntax and grammar are often ignored, as well--not a crime for casual writing, to be sure, but qualities of published writing that should be polished.
'Separation Anxiety' is troubling, but not in the same way as much of the horror and suspense I read and review. What I found most appalling by far were the prejudices within the text. Rather than giving readers the chills, 'Separation Anxiety' leaves us a little nauseous. Before checking this one out, I suggest visiting the Book Club Reading List (http://bookclubreading.com/books?ap_i...) for something spookier.
Curtain “Drape” Taylor is finishing her final months in college: defending her thesis—Drape is inexplicably graduating with a Ph.D. at age twenty, despite only having started college four years previously—and planning her imminent wedding to Cosmos, or “Sky.” Amidst Drape’s personal ups and downs, three of her friends have been mysteriously murdered following their move to Chicago apartments overseen by a mysterious older man. The mystery, however, is no real mystery, eliminating the thrill of discovery. Early on, when Federbush introduces Salvatore Bianco, she makes it clear--in, frankly, xenophobic terms--that he is the novel's villain: tellingly, when someone questions why a forty-year-old stranger is interested in caretaking two adult women, Drape's friend Stone only replies: "Oh, he'll be interested. I told you, he's Italian."
We can only assume that the implication is that Italian men are predatory, an unsettling conclusion for a young woman to reach, particularly in the 21st century. One of the major flaws of the novel is this kind of antiquated mindset, applied to a modern college student. The incongruity is too much; nothing about the narration is believable. Drape makes frequent, condescending remarks about "non-believers" and uses her Facebook for the purpose of posting daily quotes from her Bible. However, even beyond her not-so-subtle evangelical mission, Drape insistently condemns another population in a curiously old-fashioned mode: the mother who opts for in vitro fertilization. The premise is that Drape is traumatized by growing up without a father because she was conceived using IVF. Naturally, her traumatic responses take on an alarmingly sexist tone:
"For Drape, the meatloaf smells triggered childish fears of being in danger without a male in the house to protect her."
Even if we assume the best of Drape's--and, by extension, Federbush's--moral positioning, she is acknowledging the inferiority of women in their inability to defend themselves. It is difficult to ignore the social implications of 'Separation Anxiety,' but even if they went unremarked upon, the writing in 'Separation Anxiety' leaves something to be desired. Dialogue is remarkably inauthentic--each character, regardless of age, speaks in a stilted, formal manner, as if reciting each sentence onstage. Syntax and grammar are often ignored, as well--not a crime for casual writing, to be sure, but qualities of published writing that should be polished.
'Separation Anxiety' is troubling, but not in the same way as much of the horror and suspense I read and review. What I found most appalling by far were the prejudices within the text. Rather than giving readers the chills, 'Separation Anxiety' leaves us a little nauseous. Before checking this one out, I suggest visiting the Book Club Reading List (http://bookclubreading.com/books?ap_i...) for something spookier.
April 15, 2016
*contest bk* *main character is named 'Curtain.'
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews