PROLOGUE STARTS AT NOON
Monday, August 12th
The MC Erny Gallery
On Monday, August 12th, at NOON in the MC Erny Gallery, host Ben Steelman of The Star News will sit down with author Flora J. Soloman to discuss her latest book, "Along The Broken Bay."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Flora J. Solomon moved from Michigan's winter wonderland to the beautiful North Carolina coast where she lives with her husband. Besides reading and writing, she enjoys visits from her children and grandchildren, bicycling through the community, a hard won tennis match, and an occasional round of golf. She has this to say about writing her most recent book: “Choosing the subject matter was easy…I would weave a story about those brave people who endured the Japanese occupation outside the prison camps. My difficulty lay on where to focus the voice of the story: on the journalists who obtained much of their information from forbidden radio broadcasts, on medical personnel who provided contraband drugs to the prisoners, on government officials who collaborated with the underground, on the guerrillas in the mountains who unceasingly harassed Japanese military units, or the missionary families who hid in the swamps to avoid capture or worse. Though these factions show up in my story, in the end my choice was to focus the spotlight on an American woman who opened a nightclub in Manila to support the guerrillas, and who then became a spy for the Allied forces. My reasoning for selecting and fictionalizing her amazing tale was to bring music, dance, and color to an otherwise dark subject.”
ABOUT THE BOOK:
December 1941. War has erupted in the Pacific, spelling danger for Gina Capelli Thorpe, an American expat living in Manila. When the Japanese invade and her husband goes missing, Gina flees with her daughter to the Zambales Mountains to avoid capture—or worse.
Desperate for money, medicine, and guns, the resistance recruits Gina to join their underground army and smuggles her back to Manila. There, she forges a new identity and opens a nightclub, where seductive beauties sing, dance, and tease secrets out of high-ranking Japanese officers while the wildly successful club and its enemy patrons help fund the resistance.
But operating undercover in the spotlight has Gina struggling to stay a step ahead of the Japanese. She’s risked everything to take a stand, but her club is a house of cards in the eye of a storm. Can Gina keep this delicate operation running long enough to outlast the enemy, or is she on a sure path to defeat that will put her family, her freedom, or even her life at risk?
