How Steve Weinstein Turns a Backyard Feud Into a Comic Fable in Nuts To You
A retired lawyer declares war on the squirrels raiding his vegetable garden. Then the squirrels start answering him.
That is the unlikely feud at the center of Steve Weinstein’s comic novel Nuts To You. Pincus Ballnick lives in Queens, New York, where the houses stand shoulder to shoulder, and a sneeze in one kitchen can earn a “God bless you” from the next. What Pincus wants is a peaceful garden. What he has is a growing crowd of squirrels that eat his cucumbers, dig up his soil, and nibble his prized tomatoes before walking away from the evidence. He is armed with a Daisy BB gun and a temper. They are armed with numbers, patience, and complete indifference.
It is a small quarrel with a surprisingly large reach: What happens when the thing you cannot stand becomes the thing you cannot stop thinking about?
A Sunday Breakfast Goes Wrong
The novel opens on a quiet mid-September Sunday, at least by Queens standards. Miriam Ballnick moves between the stove and the table with bacon, eggs, and a bowl of oatmeal so thick that her husband claims it can hold a spoon upside down. Pincus settles in with the Sunday paper, which Miriam has gone to great lengths to make sure arrives on time. Then he glances out at the backyard and sees a group of squirrels enjoying breakfast beside his tomatoes, five different kinds, to be exact.
He slams the paper down, promises that their days are numbered, and reaches for the BB gun. The pellet leaves the barrel with a twang like a worn guitar string and travels so slowly that a person can watch it lose interest before it reaches the target. The squirrels do not even look up. The scene sets the tone for the whole book: the anger is real, the weapon is not, and the audience is not impressed.
The Wife Who Feeds the Enemy
Miriam does not share the war. When Pincus drives off to the veterans’ club to ask trained soldiers for advice on eliminating the enemy, she gathers leftover bread and bits of egg, sets them on the picnic table, and apologizes to the squirrels for her husband’s temper. He tends to get overexcited, she explains, and they are welcome to enjoy their new breakfast.
Her devotion runs in every direction. Because a late Sunday paper can spoil her husband’s mood for the entire day, Miriam has been known to walk to the deli across the street, buy a copy, fold it as though it had been delivered, and place it on his chair as if nothing had happened. Another catastrophe avoided, and Pincus never suspects a thing.
The result is a household with a battlefield on one side of the kitchen door and a buffet on the other. Weinstein plays it for laughs, yet the marriage feels lived in. Miriam knows her husband’s habits, his sneaky chocolate cravings, and his moods, and she manages all three with food, patience, and a blood pressure pill delivered at exactly the right moment.
How long can one household be both a war and a picnic?
What does a person do when the enemy refuses to be afraid?
A Man of Very Particular Habits
Pincus has plenty of habits, and Weinstein enjoys every one of them. The fifteen-minute drive to the veterans’ club becomes a forty-five-minute expedition because he gets lost on a road he has traveled thousands of times, and the members know to park well away from the entrance when he is expected. He parks by sound rather than sight, and his explanation is that bumpers exist for a reason. Trained as a lawyer, he treats everyone as a possible opponent, trading insults for sport before letting a smile break through just to watch how the room reacts.
His chocolate habit is a running gag with a tender edge. Miriam warns him about diabetes, so Pincus recruits the ten-year-old next door, hands over two dollars, and swears the boy into an exclusive spy club with exactly two members. The candy goes behind the green flower pot, and Miriam, the enemy, is never to hear a word. It is a small deception, and it tells readers more about the man than his temper does. Pincus wants a game, a mission, and something to win.
A Business Card Nobody Asked For
At the veterans’ club, Pincus lowers his voice and tells Ernie, the bartender, that he has a problem. In a room where the average age is in the low eighties, that word usually means a medical announcement. The card game stops, hearing aids are turned up, and everyone waits. “Squirrels,” Pincus says. The room relaxes, and a few members shake their heads, relieved and slightly disappointed.
Ernie has a niece who runs a business in holistic remedies for animals. Her card reads Senorita Carabba, Animal Naturalist, Animal Whisperer, Spiritual Advisor, with a motto underneath: Don’t Get Rid of Them, Get To Know Them. Pincus says he does not believe in cosmic forces, karma, or any of it. He puts the card in his pocket anyway.
A Fight About More Than Tomatoes
Ernie understands something that Pincus does not. To Pincus, the tomatoes are close to family, and the squirrels have stopped being afraid of him. A man trained as a lawyer, who has spent years treating everyone as a potential opponent, is now fighting a war that is wearing him down. Ernie decides not to judge. Pincus is a veteran, and Ernie would do anything to help him.
When Nuts To You becomes available on October 31, 2026, readers will find a novel that begins with a bowl of oatmeal and a very slow BB and grows far bigger than either. The squirrels are only the beginning. What Weinstein builds on the feud is a story about pride, company, and the strange things that happen when two sides finally start to talk.
A garden can start a war…
A bartender can answer it with a business card…
An enemy can turn out to be worth knowing…
The best fights in Nuts To You are the ones that were never really about tomatoes!
Author Name: Steve Weinstein Book Title: Nuts To You Published By: Author Path Publishers
