This novel has elements of a modern Western, historical fiction, and a family saga, and many moments of action, romance, heroism, and machismo.It is fiction, but its starting point is based on the reported kidnapping of an American Consul in Puebla, Mexico, in 1920 during the turbulent times of the Mexican Revolution. A ransom was paid. Shortly thereafter the consul resigned his post, bought a sugar mill, and later he started the nation's largest bank and controlled the movie industry. His name was William Jenkins. The character of Willard Riley is loosely based on the kidnapping incident.The novel features the young fighter pilot, Tell Cooper, who flew with the Lafayette Escadrille in France in World War I; his newfound friend, Willard Riley, the amoral consul; his first love, the exotic Toña; the loathsome Jorge Rubio whom he calls "Toad"; the charismatic Johnny Ávalos, who might have been president of Mexico had it not been for one perceived flaw in his character; and Helen Anderson, the newspaperwoman who would marry Cooper and write a history of the Riley empire. Her manuscript was titled "Riley's Golden Ear."The Golden Ear takes place mostly in Mexico, but there are parts that concern Cooper's son flying Spitfires in the Battle of Britain during World War II, as well as the exploits of Toña's son, a U.S. naval carrier-based fighter pilot in the same war. The fighter pilot fabric in the novel is authentic: At the tender age of 20, the author shot down five Japanese aircraft just before the end of the war.Austin Olsen (1924-2007) had two other novels published: Corcho Bliss, Simon and Schuster, 1972, and Apache Ambush, Kensington, 2000.
About the Author: Austin L. "Toss" Olsen, was born in Price, Utah, on Dec. 20, 1924. After he graduated from Highline High School near Seattle, Wash., in 1942, he joined the U.S. Navy. He flew the F6F Hellcat during World War II, shooting down five Japanese planes. He received a Silver Star, a Distinguished Flying Cross, and five Air Medals. He married Adeline P. "Pat" Carter in 1948, and after graduating from the University of Washington in 1949 with a BA degree in journalism, he moved to Mexico, where he lived and worked for about 30 years, primarily in Mexico City. He then spent 10 years in New Mexico and California, and then returned to Mexico, settling near Cuernavaca, where he died in 2007. He spent much of his professional life in the advertising business, capped by the sale in the 1970s of his own ad agency to J. Walter Thompson. He was the author of two novels, "Corcho Bliss" published in 1972 by Simon and Schuster, and "Apache Ambush," published in 2000 by Kensington. He was an avid golfer, hunter and fisherman, taking his family on many outings around Mexico. His widow lives in Xochitepec, Morelos, with two sons. A third son lives in Arizona. In 2005 he completed a manuscript, a personal biography of nearly four years of his life, ages 17 to 20, during which he trained to be a fighter pilot in World War II and shot down five Japanese airplanes during his tour of duty in the Pacific. The working title is "The Education of a Fighter Pilot." To write the manuscript, he relied on his own memory, his flight log books, his commendations, and 144 letters, postcards and telegrams that he sent to his parents, then living south of Seattle, from wherever he was at the time. He trained for almost two years in six states and served in combat with VF-30 aboard the carrier Belleau Wood.