On April 15, 1943 Camp Ellis opened and over the next couple of years 130,000 troops were trained there and 5000 German prisoners of war were housed there. This 20,000 acre camp which contained 2,200 buildings was built in the middle of farmland in Illinois and closed down in December 1945. Over the next five years it was used sparingly by the National Guard in the summertime. In 1949 Ronnie twelve years old and Larry thirteen years old arrived with their family to this deserted camp where their father Colonel Dale Stephenson would be closing the base down preparing for it to be sold to be used as farmland again. Everything had been left intact over the four years that the camp had not been used. The Stephenson brothers explored the camp with the feel of the ghosts from the past soldiers who went through the camp and were lost in the Second World War. Going to school in Ipava, Illinois the closest town of only five hundred people the boys learn to play basketball and their first encounter with girls. The basketball team with the two boys was propelled to a new height that the school and town had never seen.
About the Author: Writing has been a passion of mine all my life but not able to spell and slightly dyslexic made it almost impossible. 12 years ago I purchased a computer and installed voice activation which freed me to write. I worked in the automobile industry all my life and met many interesting people who were a combination of the characters in my books. There are very few stories that haven't been told the only difference is the characters and the dialogue. While owning a body shop I met district attorneys, doctors, lawyers, policeman and every other kind of person and a lot of them became my friends and had different stories to tell. The books are a combination of these characters and things that had happened in my life. I also played semi pro basketball when I was younger. The five books I've written and published are California Roller Coaster is about the car industry in the 50s and what happened in the Korean War. Drake is about a car repossessed who gets in trouble while picking up a rare car. Black Cloud Rising takes you into the future where an in plant in your brain connects you to a mainframe computer allowing you to speak different languages and know what's going on around the world at all times and has some pretty kinky sex in it. The Stephenson's is about my family and how we moved around I went to 12 schools in 12 years my father was a officer in the Army. Green Bear High School a high school basketball player who transfers in to a school in San Francisco from Texas but what he's up to is not quite right. This story actually happened after I wrote it. Mr. Dist. Atty. is about how hard it is to be a County Dist. Atty. when there's a serial killer running around. I have several other books that I'm working on I've already did a sequel to Black Cloud Rising because the people will read it wanting to know what happened to the hero.