Ray Elliott is an editor, a publisher and an author of numerous works of nonfiction. As a longtime English and journalism educator, he has encouraged and inspired young people to pursue their dreams. In 1999, he left the classroom to pursue his own dreams and began work on the book that had been running through his mind since the days following World War II. Since that time, he's also been a farmer, a Marine, an oil field roughneck, a construction laborer and a truck driver. He now lives in Urbana, Illinois, with his wife and two daughters. This is his first novel.