Gregory Fournier’s Zug Island: A Detroit Riot Novel Named Finalist in USA Best Books 2011 Awards

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Santee, California, United States of America (Free-Press-Release.com) November 17, 2011 -- Gregory Fournier’s debut novel, Zug Island: A Detroit Riot Novel (ISBN 978-1-4116-8691-5), was named a finalist in the Fiction: Multicultural category in the USA Best Books 2011 Awards, which are sponsored by USA Book News. USABookNews.com announced the awards on November 1, 2011. Winners and finalists were announced in over 140 categories covering print, e-books, and audio books. Awards were presented for titles published in 2010 and 2011.

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.

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.

“It's not easy being Detroit. After the 1967 riots, the Motor City never recovered. There are many reasons and lots of blame to go around,” said Fournier. “But there is another side of Detroit; it’s a forward-looking city, trying to heal itself and forge a new future from the ashes of its past.”

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. In addition to Zug Island, he has written a stage adaptation of Crime and Punishment. Mr. Fournier is currently working on his next project, In the Shadow of the Water Tower, 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.

For more information on Gregory A. Fournier or Zug Island: A Detroit Riot Novel, please visit: www.zugislandthenovel.com or www.fornology.blogspot.com/.

For further information, please contact:
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