The Sky's the Limit for Local Author
There is something about our hamlet that brings out the creativity in people. In addition to our many talented artists and actors, Palisades has had its share of imaginative writers over the years, including John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, John Dos Passos, and Dorothy Davis, to name but a few.
Happily the tradition has continued. Alice Haagensen preserved the history of Palisades in her work, Palisades and Snedens Landing, while Greta Nettleton wrote The Quack's Daughter. Indeed, many locals are at this very minute pounding away on keyboards, writing their novels.
One such local author, Hubert Pedroli, who works by day in the financial industry, has been spending his evenings and winter weekends writing fiction for over twenty years. His main focus had been a novel about his favorite pastime, entitled Prisoner of Golf, until one night several years ago…
It was around 3:30 a.m. when he woke his wife, Mary Tiegreen, and told her he’d just had an amazing dream. As she listened, he described the entire story: a family of farmers in Iowa, a boy who sees a UFO, an irascible Air Force base commander, fighter jets in action, an evil top secret government Swat team who comes in to take the UFO away, and a hapless alien who simply wants to go home. The plot was set, the characters were there, and it was just a matter of writing it all down.
Five years later, Pedroli’s novel, The Joyrider, is at last finished. The story is an action-packed adventure with plenty of well-researched information about the mystery of UFOs, the government cover-up effort and the likelihood of extraterrestrial life.
In a strange way, the author had to speed up his writing towards the end, as reality was fast catching up with fiction. A chapter describing how the NSA is spying on U.S. citizens, a piece written over two years ago, had now become front-page news. Then, everyday it seemed, more and more earthlike planets were being discovered, confirming a central tenet of the Joyrider story, the simple fact that the universe is teeming with planets and life. A classic case of life imitating fiction!
In researching the book, Pedroli and Tiegreen had the opportunity to attend the world-famous Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin and watch the Thunderbirds perform their dazzling aerobatic maneuvers at a big air show in Kingston, Rhode Island. They visited countless air plane museums including the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson.
Another highlight of the research was attending America’s largest UFO convention, The International UFO Congress, in Fountain Hills, Arizona, where they sat next to a retired Air Force General. Their research also took them deep into the well-documented Hudson Valley UFO wave of the mid-80s!
The website “palisadeslanding.com” has all the information about the book and the author, and many interesting links related to the search for extraterrestrial life, UFOs, military aircraft, and the beautiful state of Iowa.
The book is available as a printed book on Amazon.com, and very soon as an ebook on iPad and Kindle. A nice gift for the holidays, for all kids age 8 to 88!