Thursday, October 12, 2017
Virtual Book Tour: Polio and Me by Ken Dalton @RABTBookTours
Non-Fiction - Memoir
Date Published: November, 2016
Publisher: Different Drummer Press
Polio and Me provides a view of the past, present, and future—the saga of one boy’s pain, fear, and loneliness—the long struggle to develop a vaccine and effective treatments—the world-wide goal to eradicate the polio virus, and in some twenty-first century cancer research trials, the polio virus eliminated cancerous tumors.
Excerpt:
Today, seventy-two years later, as a father of three, a
grandfather, and great-grandfather, the idea that an ambulance team could walk
into my doctor’s office and rip my son or daughter from my arms is an appalling
notion. But this was 1943, decades ago, when polio epidemics killed
and paralyzed an average of 12,000 children and adults each year.
I understand that having your child taken from your arms sounds
draconian, but in Los Angeles, during the summer months of the
annual polio epidemics, as many as one hundred patients a day were
admitted to Los Angeles County Hospital. Once the patient’s illness was
confirmed as polio, those patients were moved to the Communicable Disease
Building where they would remain isolated until all possibility of passing on the polio virus
to a non-infected person had ended.
And Los Angeles was not alone. Public health professionals
throughout the country had learned to act swiftly because when it came to
a polio pandemic, the end justified the means. So the abrupt actions
of the Los Angeles ambulance crew may have seemed cruel, but the fear
of polio, both real and exaggerated, caused even rational professionals to
overreact. The moment any patient’s illness was thought to be polio, that
patient would be rushed to an isolation facility where he or she would remain
for weeks if not months.
One of the major reasons a diagnosis of polio was so
frightening for my parents and the medical professionals alike, was that no one
could predict the eventual outcome of a polio infection for an
agonizingly long period of time. While I was in the Communicable Disease
Building at the Los Angeles County Hospital, my parents struggled with a list
of frightening questions without a way to learn the answers.
Would their son lose his ability to breathe and die in
isolation?
Would their son spend the rest of his days living in an iron
lung?
Would their son remain paralyzed?
Would their son recover some use of his limbs?
Looking back, those weeks apart were among the most traumatic
days of my life. But during that summer of 1943, as the summers before, and the
summers that followed, children with polio, and their parents, learned to
endure.
About the Author
Ken Dalton was born in Los Angeles in 1938. In 1943 he contracted polio and spent the next eleven years of his childhood in and out of hospitals.
Fifty-nine years ago he married his childhood sweetheart and is a father of three, a grandfather of four, and the great-grandfather of nine.
After a thirty-eight year management career with Pacific Telephone Company, Ken retired to write golf and travel articles for Golf Digest, Golf Illustrated, Fairways and Greens, and Golf.com.
During two NBC-TV Celebrity Golf Tournaments at Lake Tahoe, he interviewed Olympic Decathlon Champion, Bruce Jenner when he was Bruce, not Caitlyn, the mischievous Chicago Bears quarterback, Jim McMahon, the iconic Vice-President Dan Quail, and NBC Today show anchor, Matt Lauer.
Ken has published six mystery novels. Polio and Me marks his initial foray into the world of non-fiction.
Presently, Ken is working on his seventh mystery, The Heretics Hymnal, and a comedy of manners novel, Casper Potts and the Ladies Casserole club.
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Cover Reveal: Greco's Game by James Houston Turner @rubyrockfilms @RABTBookTours
Thriller / Suspense / Action / Romance
Date Published: November 1, 2017
Publisher: Regis Books
Colonel Aleksandr Talanov – the “ice man” – is married to a woman he wishes he could love. But he can’t, and it’s an ugly consequence of his training with the KGB. Even so, no one should have to experience what Talanov experiences: the brutal murder of his wife in front of his eyes.
Wracked with guilt and suspected of plotting her death, Talanov spirals downward on a path of self-destruction. He should have been killed, not her. He was the one whose violent past would not leave them alone. Months tick by and Talanov hits rock bottom on the mean streets of Los Angeles, where he meets a hooker named Larisa, who drugs and robs him.
But in the seedy world of human trafficking ruled by the Russian mafia, Larisa made the mistake of stealing the ice man’s wallet. In it was Talanov’s sole possession of value: his wedding photo. Talanov tracks Larisa down to get that photo because it reminds him of everything that should have been but never was, and never would be because an assassin’s bullet had mistakenly killed his wife. Or was it a mistake?
The answer lies in Greco’s Game, a chess match played in 1619 that is famous for its queen sacrifice and checkmate in only eight moves. In an unusual alliance, Talanov and Larisa team up to begin unraveling the mystery of what Talanov’s old KGB chess instructor regarded as the most brilliant example of how to trap and kill an opponent. The question is: who was the target?
About the Author
James Houston Turner is the bestselling author of the Aleksandr Talanov thriller series, as well as numerous other books and articles. Talanov the fictional character was inspired by the actual KGB agent who once leaked word out of Moscow that James was on a KGB watch-list for his smuggling activities behind the old Iron Curtain. James Houston Turner’s debut thriller, Department Thirteen, was voted “Best Thriller” by USA Book News, after which it won gold medals in the Independent Publisher (“IPPY”) Book Awards and the Indie Book Awards. His novel, Greco’s Game, has just been optioned for film. A cancer survivor of more than twenty-five years, he holds a bachelor’s degree from Baker University and a master’s degree from the University of Houston (Clear Lake). After twenty years in Australia, he and his wife, Wendy, author of The Recipe Gal Cookbook, now live in Austin, Texas.
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