Dereck J Cram

Gad Factory Dereck J Cram 1 of 1 edition

Thirty-three-year-old war veteran Edgar Weatherholt takes a seasonal job in a fruit factory, but the only person who can get him there is his nine-year-old niece; recent high school graduate David Hernando of El Paso, Texas, endures a traumatic ride from a migrant camp to work the mysterious new fruit; Antiope Penuel escapes from an academy where the students are required to work tirelessly towards industrial pursuits. Three lives become comically intertwined around a mysterious new superfruit and the dreams which guide them as the truth behind the genetically modified organism and the factory poised to produce them come to a tumultuous head. The factory, cold, wet, mechanistic, is an unlikely incubator for human virtues, grandiose fantasies, sparks of genius, paranoia, insubordination, and the like; the mind, however, is not easily extinguished, and intelligence can be found in the unlikeliest of places. Gad Factory is a gallows humor fiction novel. At its heart is the exploration of the notion that to sustain the dreams of the few at the expense of the many is somehow integral to the vast American experience; standing governmental against the grain of "rugged individualism", it goes contrary to the core virtues of this country, and, in fact, we should be fueling as many dreams as possible. From the author: "I began this book three years ago while working in a cherry factory as a sorter where I suffered severe motion sickness. My intent was to capture the mood of the factory as well as the insane little daydreams I had conjured due to boredom, but it soon developed into a story about the present state of humanity."