This is the story of a young journalist who goes from covering a small town's crime and city council meetings to becoming fully emerged in covering a rapidly escalating killing spree, involving some of the most well-known and influential people in her community. Actual construction on a building project is about to commence, even as the town newspaper, its readers and many of its most concerned citizens continue to oppose it. The body of a key figure in the project turns up murdered one morning, setting off a chain of events that frustrate not only the police, but the reporter covering the story. Julie DuBois, lacks experience, but is driven to make the most of her first big opportunity. Her job is to tell story where few facts are known and many accusations and suspicions-mostly supplied by her own paper and its editor-are floating around. She persists, by doing what reporters do, getting as much information as possible, talking to as many people as she can, and keeping her eyes and ears open. A conflict arises when she and her editor find themselves in the middle of the investigation. In the end, not only does she get her story, but she is instrumental in ending the killing spree. She also learns a valuable lesson-that nothing is as it appears to be, and that every story is merely a composite of many interacting stories, and that no story is an end in itself. Making sense of it all comes down not only to seeking out the truth, but being prepared to accept wherever the search leads her.
About the Author: Phil Terrana was born in Rochester, New York, went to college in Lowell, Massachusetts, and has lived in Virginia Beach, Virginia for the past forty years. He has written two previous novel-Postal Service, about a career in the Postal Service and Hell on Earth, a love story, about his on and off again relationship with the newspaper business. He's written letters-to-the-editor for most of his adult life and currently contributes as a guest columnist to The Virginian-Pilot Forum Page. Like the two main characters in this story, he believes newspapers have played a vital role in our history, both as a major distributor of news and by providing an important platform for exchanging ideas or discussing policies in a public setting. He believes Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social interaction, while continuing to grow in popularity, present a very real potential for abuse. He also believes that the general lack of civility found on the Internet fosters much of the discontent in today's public discourse. A few years back, he went down to the wire in jury selection for a rather large banking corruption trial. Many shady deals involving bank officers, businessmen and public figures were eventually exposed in the trial. This trial, coupled with the role violence plays in the world today served as the catalyst for this story. He also remembers meeting and being intrigued by the speaking style of a girl from Huntsville, Alabama over forty years ago. She now lives in Opelika.