Talk about far-fetched, in getting from back there to here, I meandered along a circuitous path that hardly resembles your usual stodgy curriculum vitae. Polish on my mother’s side and Montenegrin on my father’s, with grandparents who spoke little or no English, my early outlook was ethnic and suspicious. As a very young boy I witnessed the second Great Migration of Blacks (African Americans) from the South and how the war-time jobs had disappeared, leaving behind joblessness, poverty and growing crime. A social and economic pandemic emerged but was largely ignored amid the euphoria of WWII victory, an incessant class and racist virus even more widespread today.
As a natural iconoclast, I joined the dwindling number of itinerant newsmen roaming the countryside in search of, well just about everything. Sadly, our breed has vanished into the digital ether. After three newspapers, and a six-year stint as an urban affairs investigative reporter for the Associated Press, I jumped over to TV news. But not before I returned to my stomping grounds in Newark after the 1967 riots that torched much of the city and left twenty-six people dead. How and why did it happen, and most of all, when were the seeds for this urban disaster planted and allowed to grow? It was way back then that my Passaic River Trilogy began to take shape.
There were three Emmys for investigative documentaries, and the California Bar Association’s Medallion Award for Distinguished Reporting on the Administration of Justice for my documentary, “Mexican Prisons – Justice or Tyranny.” Another Emmy-winning documentary, “The Abused Woman,” caught the eye of Ashley Books, resulting in the publication of my book, “The Battered Rich,” an in-depth study of marital abuse among the affluent, a topic rarely touched at that time. It is the central focus for the third book of my Passaic River Trilogy (no working title as yet). Literary Awards for the first two books of the Trilogy are:
FATHER DIVINE’S BIKES
WINNER: 2018-2020 Elite Choice Award Winner Noir Fiction
2018 Solo Medalist Winner New Apple Literary Award E-Book
General Fiction
FINALIST: 2020 Book Excellence Award Finalist Book in a Series
2018 International Book Award Finalist Genre Fiction (Am. Book Fest)
2018 Best Book Awards Finalist General Fiction (Am. Book Fest)
PAYBACK-TALES OF LOVE, HATE AND REVENGE
Launched in December 2019
WINNER: 2020 Elite Choice Award Winner Noir Fiction
2020 Reader Views Literary Award First Place Mystery/Thriller
2020 American Fiction Award Winner General Fiction (Am. Book Fest)
2020 Reader’s Favorites Silver Medal Winner Fiction-Crime
FINALIST: 2020 International Book Award Finalist General Fiction (Am. Book Fest)
2020 American Fiction Award Finalist Mystery/Thriller Multicultural &
Diversity (Am. Book Fest)
Notable 100 Book in the Shelf Unbound Best Indie Book Competition 2020
Royal Dragonfly Certificate of Excellence in Literature: Honorable Mention Fiction-Novel 2020
