Gad Factory

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, industrial, is an unlikely incubator for grandiose fantasies, sparks of genius, paranoia, insubordination, and the like; the human mind, however, is not easily extinguished, and intelligence can be found in the unlikeliest of places.

Gad Factory begins by an early morning trip to a fruit processing factory where Edgar E. Weatherholt is expected at orientation before taking a job as a general laborer. Having no transportation of his own, he relies on his niece to get him there. We learn that Edgar is a recent war veteran and that he is working on a project involving algae and that he is hoping to earn enough money to pay off a lean on the family farm that he inherited. Meanwhile, David Hernando is heading to the same factory by a co-op farm bus on a three-hour journey. The bus is involved in an accident with a van and passengers and driver are hindered during the subsequent investigation into the crash. David chats with the medic who looks over his injuries and finally everyone is loaded back onto the bus for the final minutes of their morning journey. Antiope Penuel travels with two security guards who are intent on taking her back “home” to an industrial trade school called Duck Lake Academy where the students are forced to work in a fruit factory; Antiope, nevertheless, has other plans and enacts a clever plan of escape. As the three protagonists comically battle the elements of modern civilization, nothing short of humanity is at stake.

Dereck J. Cram was born in Traverse City, Michigan, in the Year of Pong. He is a graduate of Grand Valley State University with a dual degree in Russian Studies and English Literature. An Iraq War veteran, Cram served for eight years in the U. S. Army Reserves. He has extensive knowledge of the Michigan fruit industry, having worked several seasons as cherry harvester, sorter, and machine operator, and most recently for two seasons as an apple picker at a local farm.