Jackie & Steve

FAITH… FAMILY… FRENZY! Nine months after their comically abbreviated RV road trip, detailed in the award-winning book, STASHES, the Breeden family farm routines have stabilized: Jackie returned to her high school cafeteria job and their only son, Brandon, works alongside his father, Steve, in the family micro-dairy. But then an outsider arrives, claiming to be kin, and HASHES & BASHES begin. Steve was already perturbed with the brother he has when Carl Edwards strides onto the farm. David Breeden, who lives nearby, is not a bastard but always acted like one. Carl, a charismatic Californian, may be a bastard, but doesn't act like one… Yet Carl rocks the entire small Midwestern farming community, including a lively cast of characters who assault Steve's calm-against-chaos pattern in this humorous family saga: • his spunky farmwife, Jackie, and her meddlesome church lady friends • his immature son, Brandon, and his female pursuers • his pastor, who attempts to foist guilt while grubbing funds • the lure of edible and spreadable medical marijuana and easy money from natural gas fracking Only Sparty, Steve's dog, remains steadfast throughout the hijinks.

Stashes is set in Michigan, where auto manufacturing and agriculture forged a reliable middle class. It's Fall 2009, after unfortunate real estate practices gutted the American Dream. The plot focuses on two couples: the traditional, yet spunky Jackie and her dairy managing husband Steve, and their son, Brandon and his conniving wife, Amy. When Brandon loses his job and home to foreclosure, he and Amy must move in with the folks, who, with a desire to be as capricious as their kids, leave their homestead in the care of Brandon and Amy to travel the US by RV. Amy expands the business with pot cookies, dragging Brandon and Jackie into the scheme. As the local bank's VP, Amy secretly increases the Home Equity Line of Credit that financed the RV. Oops! Stashes is a comical crossover between family saga and drug caper, satire spun with good-natured American wit and grit.