Author Promotes First Novel, Zug Island While Working on a True Crime Murder Mystery Book

Santee, CA, March 31, 2013 --(PR.com)-- Set in rust-belt Michigan in 1967, Zug Island tells the story of Jake Malone, an eighteen-year-old college student who is kicked out of school and finds work as one of the few white employees in the labor crew at Great Lakes Steels' Zug Island blast furnace and coke oven complex. Forced to prove that he can handle the grueling physical labor on the island, Jake earns the respect of his African American coworkers and develops a tentative friendship with Theo Semple, a restless steelworker who longs to reunite with his wife and son in Memphis, Tennessee. The two men find camaraderie despite the racial animosity and violence that exists on Detroit’s mean streets. When riots break out across the city of Detroit, Jake must defend his friendship with Theo and reconcile his own mixed feelings about his position in the world.

"Zug Island" was a 2011 Best Books Award Finalist and received an honorable mention at the Los Angeles Book Festival. An unflinching look at segregated suburbia and the environment of civil strife that led to the race riots of the sixties, Zug Island explores the events leading up to the largest and worst riot in the nation's history, while providing an unconditional look at a young man forced to deal, for the first time, with open prejudice. Told with straightforward candor and an authentic voice, Zug Island is a coming-of-age story that explores the bonds of loyalty and friendship in the face of entrenched racial tension and civil unrest.

Mr. Fournier is currently working on his next project, The Rainy Day Murders, about the John Norman Collins “Coed Killings” of 1967 - 1969. Seven brutal murders of young women incited terror on the campuses of Eastern Michigan University and the University of Michigan, with a demonic horror unrivaled in Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor history. Forty-five years later, five of the original seven murders are cold cases deserving another look.

Book Information:
Zug Island: A Detroit Riot Novel
By Gregory A. Fournier
Publisher: Wheatmark
ISBN: 978-1604945850
Pages: 240

About the Author:
Originally from the Detroit area, Gregory A. Fournier received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Eastern Michigan University in English Language Arts and Sociology. He has taught secondary school for over thirty years in Michigan and San Diego, and he was an adjunct professor at Cuyamaca College in San Diego County for ten years. He is enjoying the challenge of becoming an author which has been a life-long dream of his.

Check out his blog at Fornology.blogspot.com

For more information, review copies or author interviews contact:
Gregory A. Fournier
Email: gregoryafournier@gmail.com
Website: http://www.zugislandthenovel.com

Zug Island is available online through the author's website, from the publisher and at several online retailers.