Don’t judge. I found the chicken/eagle in the basement. It’s made of cedar. It was my dad’s first and ONLY piece of chainsaw art, as far as I know. He soon decided that maybe chainsaw art wasn’t his calling. Then he made me a cedar table. Cedar was Daddy’s favorite wood. It had been handed down to him by his mom that cedar was a sacred wood. We always had cedar in our house. Sometimes, it was only a box of cedar shavings from his whittling and carvings. In the winter, he’d sit beside the wood stove, a box at his feet. He’d carve things for us kids, necklaces, tiny toys, etc. He was much better with a knife that he was with a chainsaw. Maybe it was his carving that inspired me to make Uncle Faucett a carver.

I read this novel in the dialect of its characters.

Looking for Pork Chop McQuade is a modern fiction set in rural Appalachia. The cast is a colorful set of folksy characters. While on the surface, the story holds a great deal of humor. It actually addresses big life issues. These include duplicity, paranoia, mental illness, codependency, abuse, loss, and grief.

After her father’s death, Cupcake McQuade becomes the caregiver for her great uncle, Faucett McCaughy. Named for her mother’s obsession with desserts, she also offers emotional support to her sister, Cookie.

In this episode she and Cookie learn that Faucett has been arrested. And you, the listener, get to meet the cast of characters.

Meet Cupcake McQuade. She is the main character who takes care of her great uncle, her eccentric spouse and her depressed sister.

Faucett is her ninety-four-year-old great uncle whose mind isn’t what it used to be and Bob, aka. Pork Chop, Cupcake’s husband, isn’t keen on him living so close to them.

Then there’s Thomas Jeffery, Cookie’s husband, who wants only one thing–to see his wife happy.