Don’t Look in the Freezer with Patti Eddington and Wade Rouse

Join us in Grand Rapids for a conversation between Patti Eddington and Wade Rouse! These Michigan authors will be celebrating Patti’s humorous memoir, Don’t Look in the Freezer, which is about being the outlier in a family of vets. This event is perfect for animal lovers as well as fans of memoirs that are poignant, humorous, and sometimes strange. We hope to see you there!
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About the Book:
For James Herriot fans and pet lovers, a modern-day, funny-yet-poignant memoir about what it is like to be the only person in a small family not employed in the veterinary profession.
Patti Eddington should have known when she married her veterinary student boyfriend that she would spend anniversary and birthday dinners not sitting at tables at fancy restaurants but kneeling under a surgery table in a cocktail dress, desperately trying to mop up a steady stream of blood and urine with cheap paper towels. She should have guessed that every knock at the door or ring of the phone would mean her husband would be torn away from the family for hours—sometimes returning deflated, sometimes smiling. But she could never have dreamed that her beautiful, curly-haired young daughter would one day bathe and sleep with an inflatable tick (until the day it was mysteriously punctured by a salad fork) or that she would go through her marriage of forty-five years opening every freezer door with caution.
Don’t Look in the Freezer is a humorous, poignant, loving look into the sometimes strange, mostly unglamorous, life of a veterinarian’s wife. Patti’s little family is not at all like that of famous veterinarian James Herriot’s—but is still absolutely filled with compassion and love for animals and the people who adore them.
About the Author:
Patti Eddington is a former newspaper and magazine journalist whose favorite job ever was interviewing the famous authors who came through town on book tours. She never dreamed of writing about her life because she was too busy helping build her husband’s veterinary practice, caring for her animal obsessed daughter—whose favorite childhood toy was an inflatable tick—and learning to tap dance.
Then fate, and a DNA test, led her to a story she felt compelled to tell and in 2024 “The Girl with Three Birthdays,” launched. Now she has followed that story with her second memoir “Don’t Look in the Freezer — The Very Strange Life of a Veterinarian’s Life.” Today, the mid-century modern design enthusiast and dance fitness teacher enjoys being dragged on walks by her ridiculous three-legged dog, David, reading with her Siamese cat, Symon, on her lap and watching the egrets and bald eagles from her deck on a beautiful bayou in Spring Lake, MI.
About the Conversation Partner:
Wade Rouse is the USA Today and internationally bestselling author of five memoirs and twelve novels. His novels, written under the pseudonym Viola Shipman, which he uses to honor his late grandmother, have been selected as Must-Reads by NBC’s Today Show as well as Michigan Notable Books of the Year, and featured in the Washington Post. Wade lives in Michigan and California and hosts Wine & Words with Wade, a literary happy hour, on Facebook every Thursday.