An Organized Panic

by Patty Friedmann

AN ORGANIZED PANIC sets sister against brother, born secular humanist against later-in-life evangelical Christian. The sibling squabble underscores a serious struggle, certainly, but this is another tale told in the darkly humorous Friedmann voice--and set in the New Orleans only a native would know. The manuscript took second place in the Faulkner-Wisdom competition in late 2012 and could be her best story telling yet. Friedman will challenge you to think about our own belief system as she "....opens our conversation on the sympathetic athiest narrator." Ronald Price runs a lucrative crime-scene cleaning operation called JesusCleanup. His sister, narrator Cesca Price, is they grew up in a thoroughly secular household. When Cesca and her mother Trisha have Thanksgiving dinner at Ronald's house, a meal marked by praises to Jesus and recipes loaded with sodium from canned soups, mother Trisha has a stroke, and Cesca embarks on struggles with her brother. Cesca is a painter of national repute, and in the coming weeks she has to juggle responsibility for her mother, a coming show at the Getty, and an interview with PBS host Tevor Souriante —plus a nascent friendship with her mother's doctor Michael Rosenthal. When Trisha dies, Ronald wants to use his half of the estate to buy a huge empty church to start a ministry. Is Ronald a charlatan, which means he is a crook but at least a man of reason—or is he a good Christian but no longer the man of reason who grew up with Cesca? Either way, she says no. So Ronald sues her—unsuccessfully—to remove her as executrix. Two days later she does her interview with Tevor Souriante, still fuming about her brother, not knowing the camera is rolling. Bolstered by her romance with Michael, Cesca finally realizes that Ronald prizes money above all else. In the end, Ronald and Cesca will have to face each other down in court, and each will have to try to prove the other is not above board. Has Cesca libeled Ronald and ruined his livelihood and thus owes him millions? Or is Cesca right, that he dupes innocent people, and it's okay to make it public? That resolved, what will the Price family be without Trisha?  

246 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 8, 2017

About the author

Patty Friedmann is a darkly comic New Orleans novelist whose dozen works include the Amazon perennial bestseller Too Jewish and the celebrated Secondhand Smoke. Her essays, short stories, and reviews have appeared in Newsweek, Publishers Weekly, New Orleans Noir, Short Story, and Oxford American, among other places. A novel titled An Organized Panic and a collection of her stories titled Where Do They All Come From are 2017 releases. Patty has had two husbands, two children, and three grandchildren, and currently lives with an annoying philodendron.

Reviews

[Tina Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I totally loved this book, and could relate in so many ways to the family drama that unfolds on the page. Patty Friedmann wrote the realistic yet hilarious tale of a sister and brother at odds over their inheritance when their mother passes away. I couldn't stop turning the pages and thinking about the characters.

Artist Cesca Price is the executor of her mother's will after unfortate events-which she suspects are directly the fault of her greedy, self-centered, asshole of a brother-result in her mother's death following a stroke. Ronald Price runs a death scene cleanup business in which he gets paid to pray over the dead bodies before his employees mop up the bloody mess, but for years he's been dreaming of buying his very own church when and if his mom will just be kind enough to die and leave him the funds he feels entitled to.

Set in New Orleans, this novel made me laugh at a time I really needed it. I was fortunate enough to hear the author speak before I bought my signed copy the week after my beloved grandmother passed away. That's why the sitters, the mother's hospital stay, and that whole aspect of the book were so easy to relate to, plus we all have relatives that difficult to get along with, some way more so than others. The author made me cry for her main character's loss and laugh at the antics that take place on the pages. I look forward to reading more of Ms. Friedmann's work.