Never's Just the Echo of Forever (Book Two in the Sweetwater Calhoun Series)

This is the story of 29-year-old Albie Starbach, a reclusive man, a caring man, but he is also a dangerous man… living in a world that to him is threatening because he feels he has been wronged, so he is resentful. And he has wired his rooming house with dynamite, and every time he goes out he sets a timer. He had better get back in time, without interference or difficulty, or the house will blow. His only companion is his legless mother who, in a wheelchair in their basement rooms, conducts day-long derisive arguments with the television, as if all those people were alive in her room. Living together at the bottom of their world, mother and son feed each other their rage, their righteous indignation, their sense of moral singularity. Determinedly alone, determinedly wounded, they are embattled, and their story is very much a story of our time, and the world had better watch out because this innocuous caretaker is prepared to take everyone with him.