Shoo-Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy

I read Rabbit At Rest by John Updike.

In 1989, the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 dominates headlines and Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom splits his golden years playing golf in Deleon, Florida in the winter and managing Springer Motors in Brewer, Pennsylvania in the summer.

Harry develops a sweet (and salty) tooth that adds extra pounds to his once lithe frame. After a sunfish overturns and nearly drowns his granddaughter, a myocardial infarction nearly ends his own life. Harry fears open heart surgery and has an angioplasty instead.

He returns to Brewer and discovers his son, Nelson, has stolen thousands of dollars from the family business to buy cocaine. Toyota pulls the franchise from Springer Motors because of the debt and Harry is shocked that his wife wants to sell the only house he has called home to pay it. Harry commits a monstrous act with his daughter-in-law then retreats to his condominium in Florida to avoid the consequences.

Alone but determined to improve his health by exercising, the former high school basketball star challenges a flashy, neighborhood youth to a game of 21. Rabbit overextends his weakened heart and collapses on the court after sinking the winning layup. At the hospital, Harry regains consciousness long enough to make amends with his wife and son.

A mercy killing, or murder most foul?

I read Rabbit Is Rich, the third novel in the Rabbit Angstrom tetralogy by John Updike.

Inflation, the Iran hostage crisis and the unquiet dead dominate Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom's life in 1979. Ten years after man landed on the moon, Harry has reconciled with his wife Janice and inherited a pre-owned car lot from her father. In addition to his father-in-law, the swelling number of dead include his mom and pop, a girl named Jill who didn't escape Harry's burning house in Rabbit Redux, a drifter called Skeeter whose obituary reaches Harry by mysterious means and the one that haunts him the most: Rebecca, his infant daughter who drowned in a bath tub in Rabbit, Run.

A visitor to the lot sends Harry on a search for his daughter from an extramarital affair and his son returns from college with a secret and a desire to go into the family business.

Amid political, economical and familial turmoil, Rabbit invests wisely, plays golf with his rich buddies, vacations in the Caribbean and is happy, perhaps for the first time, with his marriage.

I've read the first two Rabbit novels by John Updike: Rabbit, Run and Rabbit Redux. Rich is the best of the three. It won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction in the year I was born.