The Spinach Grower: A comedy about genetic engineering gone wrong. (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781717436702)

ROSE BARNUM Having grown up in a small Texas town during the Great Depression, Rose was working on a novel about her lowdown, bathtub gin-making father called Jellybean shortly before she passed away. Literally a "Rosie the Riveter" during World War II who made camera racks for B-29 bombers, she moved to Arizona in her later years to be with her son, and, while indulging in her two passions-watching baseball and making exquisite, hand-beaded lampshades (her nickname was Lamplighter)-she and her son wrote two other novels, Mudflap the Gopher and this one, Zarhoff. She was a grand lady. LES BARNUM Beginning as a special effects cameraman and then becoming Director of Special Effects Cinematography, Les worked on the original PBS production of Cosmos with Carl Sagan, plus twenty nine other science shows for PBS, one of which won an Emmy for Special Visual Effects. (Two others were nominated.) He also shot special effects for numerous commercials, TV shows, and feature films including Fantasy Island, Altered States, The Blues Brothers, Heart Beeps, Nine to Five, and the cult classic Airplane. Helping to pay his way through college by installing wall-to-wall carpeting, Les received a B.A. in Drama from the University of California at Riverside where he was seen in the roles of Jason (of the Argonauts) in Medea, Julian in Tiny Alice, and Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. During a season with the Oregon Shakespearean Festival, he played Sir Oliver Martext, Cornelius, Sir Thomas Lovell, Marcellus, along with ten other roles in productions of Hamlet, Cymbeline, As You Like It, and Henry VIII. And in Hollywood, when he wasn't shooting special effects, he appeared in the Martin Sheen Wouk/Ware production of Forests, hosted a Handel Film production called Police Science, and was featured in a role for the Columbia Pictures Television series Houston Knights. Les is Rose's son.