This Tuesday I’ll be publishing my
ninth book,
The Cherry Pickers. It’s available at all the usual outlets and
on-line sites. It is also available through Barnes & Noble and Amazon in
paperback. With Prime I think you will get it in 3 or 4 days. Great summer
beach read, especially for you Mid-westerners who vacation in Michigan.
Here’s the blurb:
Gregory C. Randall weaves a
tale of secrets in northern Michigan during that hot and stormy summer of 1956.
With the constant fear of nuclear war, an exploding Middle East, and memories
of World War II still fresh with flowers on soldier’s graves; a young man
realizes that he is growing up. In Howie Smith’s world of primal forests, orderly
orchards, and Lake Michigan; he learns about life and begins to understand
death. A crazy aunt, a dying uncle, and the unyielding pressure to bring in the
demanding crop of cherries, forces Howie to realize there is more to life than
baseball.
Randall unveils, during this brief summer, a
family’s fears and triumphs. He explores a region of America left apart from
the chaos of the world. It is a place of unwanted migrant pickers, backwoods
people who must live off the land, and the grand lake that encloses them all.
But Howie discovers it is also a realm of miracles.
I loved writing this story, the
characters, and of a land that once was. It was a strange decade between WWII
and the Vietnam War. The country was flexing its geo-political muscles as well
as its economy. In many ways, America and its cool sense of fair play, saved
the world from retributions and vengeance at a scale never seen in its history.
What the victors did to Germany after WWI (The Great War), eventually lead to
WWII. And the machinations of Japan throughout the Far East, led inexorably to
the whole world being on fire.
The 1950s were the Eisenhower years,
some say the do-nothing years, but in reality it established the principles and
ethics for the next twenty years (good or bad depending on your politics). Business
growth exploded, the suburbs were born, cool cars hit the streets, and it was
the beginning of rock and roll. Kids were everywhere, and families were now dealing
with separation anxiety. It was the period of America’s internal diaspora.
