The Lost Boys of Happy Valley College
As a Peter Pan fan, imagine yourself flying in your dreams, without Tink’s fairy dust. While flying, you “see” other kids your age also flying. The story employs that fantasy. Eight young boys meet in their Peter Pan-induced flying dreams in the 1950’s. Destiny brings them all together in 1964 at Happy Valley College, a Disneyesque Fantasyland and Adventureland campus in northern California, where they form a bond, a tight brotherhood through athletics and their share of mischief-making, so much like Peter’s “Lost Boys” on Neverland. After one such incident they are brought before the Dean of Men, also a Peter Pan fan, who judges them of 19th century English public school “good character”, and symbolically labels the group his “Lost Boys”. The Lost Boys graduate, deal with the ever-present military draft and Vietnam War, and go their eight separate ways to pursue careers and live their lives. Their remarkable careers would make the dean proud. One quasi-Lost Boy, Tim, suffers demonstrably from Peter Pan Syndrome. In 2016, almost fifty years since the Lost Boys were all together at a San Francisco Forty Niners football game in 1969, they have a “seventy-year-olds” reunion at their campus, filled with adventures, mishaps, and renewed camaraderie. The week-long reunion concludes, and heartfelt farewells dominate. Does Tim beat the Syndrome? Will there be another reunion with all eight of the Lost Boys?
Happy Valley College
Happy Valley College will resonate with baby boomers that attended college during the Vietnam War and that dealt with the angst, uncertainties and challenges emanating from that crazy period in time. It is at once a feel good story about college life in the 60’s, ala “Animal House” and some of the cynicism of The Catcher in the Rye, but with a strong undercurrent of the Vietnam War and the emotions of a college student dealing with the military draft. College adventures are juxtaposed with war horrors of death and amputation. The reader will remember Dave Pedersen for his wealth and breadth of college and growing up experiences, and for the pain, frustration and anxiety while wrestling with options to meet his military service obligation in a way that preserves his relationship with a fellow college coed. Happy Valley College takes the reader on a journey of transition from the early carefree years of college to the realities of the Vietnam War and military draft. The story takes place at a small state college in northern California, far from the urban centers and large university hotbeds of anti-war activity. While unintended, the story also brings to light many similarities between the Vietnam War and the War in Iraq. Younger readers will gain an understanding and appreciation of the military draft system in place in the 1960’s, while baby boomers will experience a mix of refreshing nostalgia and quiet reflection.
The Art of X-Ray Reading
Roy Peter Clark, one of America's most influential writing teachers, offers writing lessons we can draw from 25 great texts. Where do writers learn their best moves? They use a technique that Roy Peter Clark calls X-ray reading, a form of reading that lets you penetrate beyond the surface of a text to see how meaning is actually being made. In The Art of X-Ray Reading, Clark invites you to don your X-ray reading glasses and join him on a guided tour through some of the most exquisite and masterful literary works of all time, from The Great Gatsby to Lolita to The Bluest Eye, and many more. Along the way, he shows you how to mine these masterpieces for invaluable writing strategies that you can add to your arsenal and apply in your own writing. Once you've experienced X-ray reading, your writing will never be the same again.
Monkey Bottom Redux
"Monkey Bottom Redux" completes the Monkey bottom Trilogy, which commenced with "Monkey Bottom" and the affair between Navy Admiral Chet Dillon and a female government employee on Naval Base Norfolk, which he commanded. The affair was cut short with the shooting death of his mistress by his wife in a neglected part of the naval base called Monkey Bottom, where the Navy wants to lease land for a casino. The disgraced admiral is forced into retirement. In the sequel, "Revenge in Monkey Bottom", Dillon leaves the country to work as a liquor rep servicing Navy bases in the Caribbean. He returns to Norfolk to help secure the liquor contract for the prospective Pamunkey Indian Resort and Casino. Because the admiral's mistress had Pamunkey blood and her murder was on sacred Pamunkey ancestral land, the tribe's "Enforcer", "Robert", kills the admiral in an act of blood revenge. In "Monkey Bottom Redux", "Robert" is a mercenary for the revolutionary FARC in Colombia, where he assassinates a high-ranking Colombian Army general and flees the country via Mexico City to San Diego where a former Army Ranger buddy produces fake ID's. He returns to Norfolk with hopes for a quieter life. He falls in love with an employee at the temporary Pamunkey casino who was the former admiral's lover in Puerto Rico. Navy NCIS and Army CID collaborate in their search for "Robert", which will require all their skills and resources. The highest levels in the Pentagon and State Department are brought into play on legal and extradition issues, with help from DOJ. What is "Robert's" fate?
