Raging Light, a New Novel by Gordon Ackerman, a Prominent, Award-Winning Journalist, Brings a Piece of Mid-Century Americana to Kindle Readers

Online, May 13, 2014 (Newswire.com) - In 1950s Northeast America, six seniors at a private, co-ed secondary school confront love, tragedy, manhood, fame and the whims of fate and fortune. Raging Light vividly and evocatively captures its era in ways seldom explored in contemporary literature. Gordon Ackerman brings fresh insight, compassion and wit to the period, place and people. The book is garnering positive feedback from Amazon readers.

A five-star Amazon review reads, "Gordon Ackerman transports us to the America of the 1950s. He tells the story with strength and feelings. We live with this group of young people through all the hardness and beauty of their lives. This is a beauty!"

This book is being aggressively promoted on Amazon and other appropriate markets with a focus on young adult fiction.

ASIN: BOOG4TTIo0

Kindle: $6.25

Genre: Fiction

About the Author: Gordon Ackerman is an American author, journalist and photographer. He was born in Albany, NY, to Earl Ackerman, a grain executive, and Helen (nee Copley) Ackerman, a classical pianist. He was educated at Boston University and the University of Paris. Ackerman's writing and reporting are in permanent collection at the University of Wyoming and the America Heritage Foundation. His fine-art photography has been exhibited in galleries and museums in Europe and the United States and acquired by, among others, the Albany Institute of History and Art. For more information, contact Gordon Ackerman at [email protected]

Writing about Raging Light, Ackerman said, "This story had been in my mind since secondary school. I tried twice to write it in my mid-twenties but I was too close to It chronologically. it was only years later that I managed to get it on paper, or rather on a laptop screen.

"I did the chapter outlines for Raging Light while on vacation in Finland in 2012 and then began writing it back home and finished the first draft in six months. The re-writing took another three months. I live in a quiet, wooded area near Albany, NY, overlooking the Hudson River, and it is a good place to write, as good as Paris, where I lived for many years.

"The geography in Raging Light is real and the places are real and the characters were inspired by real people but not much of me is Ken. He is a better man than me. Hal's - not its real name - is still there but the Riviera Club was torn down long ago to make room for a city hall.

"After I finished writing the book I worried about its narrative structure. Alina, with whom Amber falls in love, comes onstage only at the very end. The relationship between the two girls opens obvious questions about Amber's sexuality: Has she always been attracted to girls? Why hasn't she told Ken? I had trouble ending the story just as Amber's and Alina's love affair begins. I considered making Raging Light the first part of a longer, two-part book that would have dealt in the second part with the threesome - Ken, Amber and Alina. I turned that idea down and decided that Raging Light could stand by itself and that a second part would damage the first.

"A word about the dedication. Teija was a girl I met in Finland. She was a fashion model, terribly beautiful, and she inspired the book. Unfortunately, I have forgotten Teija's last name and I cannot send her copy of the book. If you see her, tell her I love her.