The author of Festival of Fear, Ron Parham, lived up the street from me as child, but moved away and had a career full of international travel. He retired and is now writing novels. I've mentioned the first two of them before, but his third one due out in September is one I am really excited about.
The story is set in my old hometown and I understand some of the characters are modeled after some of the kids he knew as he grew up in our small town. All names are changed so for people of his age, it will be a guessing game. The title is inspired by what used to the annual town event called Fall Festival. The name of the town is Acorn, Iowa which is inspired by the name of the longtime paper, The Oakland Acorn.
I know AlanAldaClone read one or both of his first books and didn't give him great reviews. I enjoyed his first two books largely because the story intersected with some of my experiences. The first one had a businessman travelling in Europe when 911 happened. I experienced a number of dangerous world events during my travels to Israel, Rome and other places. The story also included San Diego and nearby Mexico. My brother lives in San Diego, so I could relate to much of that.
His second book was about the murder of a couple of basketball coaches on an isolated lake in Kentucky. One who was involved in a point shaving scandal that went wrong and the mobsters were after him. I enjoyed it because of the basketball angle, but it quickly moved on to a thriller as the fishing guide hid from the mob.
Festival of Fear – Synopsis (Summer 2016)
The autumn of 1962 in the small town of Acorn, Iowa, was wondrous, with the cooler air, the leaves beginning to change to reds and golds, two-a-day football practices at the local high school, and especially the annual Fall Festival, with the typical small-town parade of painted floats, high school marching band, and locals lining the streets, smiling, clapping and cheering for their local Acorn High football players and cheerleaders. The smell of barbequed chicken, hot dogs and the local favorite, Maid-Rites, filled the nostrils of every person on Main Street that autumn day. Love was also in the air for football star Nick Paxton and Sarah Rogers, the effervescent blond-haired cheerleader.
But little did they know that evil lurked in their midst and that a worldwide crisis would turn their idyllic world upside down. Several teenage girls had gone missing in neighboring counties, creating an atmosphere of fear and terror in southwest Iowa. At the same time, the Cuban Missile Crisis was throwing the country and the world into chaos with the threat of global thermonuclear war.
Nick Paxton and Sarah Rogers would endure their own personal nightmare in the fall of 1962, battling the diabolical and deranged kidnapper that had already killed three local teenage girls, causing tension and fear to grip at the throats of the people of Acorn, Iowa, while the world was holding its collective breath to see if the young, inexperienced President John F. Kennedy could save the country from nuclear annihilation. The fate of a young cheerleader and that of the United States hung in the balance in that fateful October of 1962.
The story is set in my old hometown and I understand some of the characters are modeled after some of the kids he knew as he grew up in our small town. All names are changed so for people of his age, it will be a guessing game. The title is inspired by what used to the annual town event called Fall Festival. The name of the town is Acorn, Iowa which is inspired by the name of the longtime paper, The Oakland Acorn.
I know AlanAldaClone read one or both of his first books and didn't give him great reviews. I enjoyed his first two books largely because the story intersected with some of my experiences. The first one had a businessman travelling in Europe when 911 happened. I experienced a number of dangerous world events during my travels to Israel, Rome and other places. The story also included San Diego and nearby Mexico. My brother lives in San Diego, so I could relate to much of that.
His second book was about the murder of a couple of basketball coaches on an isolated lake in Kentucky. One who was involved in a point shaving scandal that went wrong and the mobsters were after him. I enjoyed it because of the basketball angle, but it quickly moved on to a thriller as the fishing guide hid from the mob.
Festival of Fear – Synopsis (Summer 2016)
The autumn of 1962 in the small town of Acorn, Iowa, was wondrous, with the cooler air, the leaves beginning to change to reds and golds, two-a-day football practices at the local high school, and especially the annual Fall Festival, with the typical small-town parade of painted floats, high school marching band, and locals lining the streets, smiling, clapping and cheering for their local Acorn High football players and cheerleaders. The smell of barbequed chicken, hot dogs and the local favorite, Maid-Rites, filled the nostrils of every person on Main Street that autumn day. Love was also in the air for football star Nick Paxton and Sarah Rogers, the effervescent blond-haired cheerleader.
But little did they know that evil lurked in their midst and that a worldwide crisis would turn their idyllic world upside down. Several teenage girls had gone missing in neighboring counties, creating an atmosphere of fear and terror in southwest Iowa. At the same time, the Cuban Missile Crisis was throwing the country and the world into chaos with the threat of global thermonuclear war.
Nick Paxton and Sarah Rogers would endure their own personal nightmare in the fall of 1962, battling the diabolical and deranged kidnapper that had already killed three local teenage girls, causing tension and fear to grip at the throats of the people of Acorn, Iowa, while the world was holding its collective breath to see if the young, inexperienced President John F. Kennedy could save the country from nuclear annihilation. The fate of a young cheerleader and that of the United States hung in the balance in that fateful October of 1962.
