I've had several requests for a new book that is written by Mark Smith. I now have that book for sale in the shop. Here is a write up about the book that was in the Alpena News:
Harrisville is both the setting for and the name of a debut novel by author Mark Gordon Smith.
As a child, Smith spent his childhood and early adult years moving around the globe: Italy, Washington, D.C., Salt Lake City, Hawaii and Colorado. It was during summer vacations that his family would return to Harrisville and Mio to visit his grandparents.
"The town of Harrisville has always been a part of me," Smith said. "I lived in that town when I was a child, and the most critical event in the novel is based upon an event that occurred while our family was living there."
Smith's maternal grandparents, Herman and Maude Dehnke, lived in Harrisville all of their adults lives, raised five children and are now buried in the Westlawn Cemetery north of town. His grandfather was a circuit court judge for many years, based in Harrisville.
The actual event around which Smith's novel is based is the November 1953 fire that destroyed the Alcona County Courthouse. While the fire figures strongly in the story, Smith has positioned the timeline back to the period before and after World War I.
The author of two previous works of non-fiction, Smith considers his foray into fiction to be a novel of hope and redemption.
"Most of my work in the past has been non-fiction, yet I have been working on 'Harrisville' for many years," Smith said. "I was motivated, right from the first word of the novel, to share my fascination with small town life through a story filled with hope and redemption."
In the book, during the years just before World War I, Mary Capstone and her mother come to live in Harrisville, and it is there that Mary meets Aaron Kershaw and Adam Davis. Passionate struggles for the possession of Mary's heart by both men initiate a chain of events that forever changes lives and the small town in which they live.
Smith, after graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, completed a five-year obligation and then worked in several multi-national companies, primarily in sales and human resources. He left corporate work in early 2001.
During the summer of that same year, he moved to Florence, Italy, and wrote the first volume of his Italian trilogy, "Tuscany Echoes, A Season in Italy." It was after his return from Italy that he began to work on Harrisville. In the midst of his work on the fiction novel, he wrote and released the second volume of his trilogy, "Tuscan Light, Memories of Italy."
Smith completed work on "Harrisville" in late 2007 and was able to bring the story to readers this spring.
