Retired Navy Pilot and Hilton Head resident Arthur Nelson Thornhill  will be the featured guest at two exciting literary events coming up in the Lowcountry.
On Saturday, May 17th, Thornhill will appear at Bay Street Trading Co., in downtown Beaufort, from 1-4 pm;  then, on Monday, May 26th, at Sea Pines Community Center at 2 pm. (The Sea Pines event is sponsored by The Island Bookseller.) At both events, Thornhill will discuss his essay “Thoughts on Reading Fiction,” and will read a tribute to our military forces. He will also be signing copies of his two novels,  The Holedigger, and Fly Away Old Glory on Wings of Hope, which will be available for purchase at each venue.
    Red Lead Bookstore online describes The Holedigger:
    “The Holedigger cries out to be read by anyone who has ever had a taste of the hell that being poor, sick, lonely, depressed, tormented, abandoned and abused brings to human existence. Witness growing up with “the boys” hanging out at a country store, as they learn to get mad, get even, and get over it to survive and move on about the business of living, loving and dying. They let you see what life is like for those who have far greater enemies to fight than those we met in all of our wars.
    “The holedigger, Rayford Franklin, personifies evil all his life as he digs wells and graves while victimizing generations of women around Woosterville, Georgia. His story digs up some human treasures buried deep in the rural south. Out of the incest and inbreeding comes a mix of characters who clearly reflect the complex sea of humanity in our real world. The chiseled-from-stone permanence of these characters gives us a bold new look at ourselves by uncovering bits and pieces of our own humanity in each of them. “The boys” and their heroes meet evil head on. They fight and cut their way through every danger to carve from a legacy of injustice and depravity a future with great promise and a ray of hope for all. They become as real as the story they tell.”
    And, of Fly Away Old Glory on Wings of Hope, Red Lead Bookstore says:
    “Navy flight instructors, their families, and people they come to know reflect the best and the worst of America’s “pacifists, permissive(s), potheads, and pilots.” Straddling two differing generational philosophies, they see “Old Glory” fade away—from seat-of-the-pants flying to blips on a computer, from teenagers in love to adults in their thirties who haven’t found love in several failed marriages, from childhood heroes to the “season of the anti-hero, from safe sex to “make love and die.” They struggle and cope with issues we all face and fly on “wings of hope” in tired old birds with students yet to know how to fly but who must fly well if they are to master the skills needed to hit a tightly strung cable on a bobbing-boat.
    “Trying to find lasting relationships in a world of unprecedented insecurity that can take it all away in a moment, these characters are screaming to be heard as they live and die, love and hate, laugh and cry their way through these turbulent times. They share their lives with raw and brutal honesty through heart-stopping adventure, great sex, betrayal, brutality, and finally love that truly rivals the greatest of literary romances.”
    For more information, call Bay Street Trading Co. at 524-2000 or The Island Bookseller at 671-3773