MARY CRANE and a Pompey Hollow Book Club Seance with Sherlock! by Jerome Mark Antil
“In the autumn of 1953, the Book Club and friends find themselves caught up in a caper involving a former war pilot and a crafty British pickpocket, while Ole Charlie meets fellow angel and revered author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. There are barn chores and barn dances, the state fair, a traveling theater group, and a grade school teacher with some pretty impressive skills as a con artist. To add to the narrative, Antil includes historical photos along with “Paracoustics” sound effects. 
These sound snippets in the form of QR codes allow smartphone users to scan and hear relevant moments of action.” ~ FOREWORD 
“Jerome Mark Antil’s Mary Crane and a Pompey Hollow Book Club Séance with Sherlock, the latest installment in the adventures of the Pompey Hollow kids, continues the group’s spirited adventures. The club members—all boys except for the steadying influence of President Mary Crane—make their early-teen way through 1950s upstate New York with the help of guardian angel and former neighbor Charlie Pitts, best known as “Ole Charlie.” The tone of the novel is wholesomely earnest, peppered with a dash of old-school mischief and fun.” ~ FOREWORD
“Antil’s love for his subject matter and familiarity with the postwar backdrop of this specific region give Pompey Hollow a color and warmth that only true nostalgia can provide.” ~ FOREWORD
“Despite the nod to modern technology, Mary Crane and a Pompey Hollow Book Club Séance with Sherlock will likely appeal to those who actually lived the times, or to young adults with a fascination for days gone by.
A lack of cynicism and openness to the concept that teens were perhaps more mature yet less sophisticated sixty years ago might also help their twenty-first-century counterparts truly appreciate the story.”~ FOREWORD
“BRILLIANT !!! Antil is a 21st century Mark Twain, who once said the difference between the almost right and right word is the difference between a lightening bug and lightening… 
…I’ve read the lightening…” ~ Ron Masak – Actor, Author – At Home with Mark Twain – Murder She Wrote
Jerome Mark Antil is the seventh child of a seventh son – of a seventh son. 
Born at sunrise it’s been told by Mary Holman Antil and Michael C. Antil Sr., that he was the first of eight siblings to stay awake all day and sleep through the night from the moment he was born in Cortland.
“I remember the Pearl Harbor attack announced on our Zenith radio before I could walk. I heard Edward R. Murrow reporting the War from London…and the scratchy battle-weary ship-to-shore Morse code messages on radio while my diaper was being changed”.
Heartfelt fare of family and friendship – light-hearted nostalgia from the 1940s and 1950s are his favorite subjects. He revels at capturing in good detail what it was like being a kid living in a world at War and its long shadows. When the War ended, he grew up in Delphi Falls, NY – which provided the setting for The Pompey Hollow Book Club and The Book of Charlie.
“My dad was a baker from the 1929 Great Depression through the post-War 1950s. 
As a young boy, I’d ride with him all throughout central and northern New York visiting grocers and U.S. Army bases; baseball parks and bread lines as he sold his bread, hot dog buns, pies and cakes. My Dad was ‘Big Mike’ and I loved listening to his timeless stories and tall tales – stopping at fishing holes along the way. All day rides with Big Mike – his Buick my Steamboat – his grand stories and an entire world at War my Mississippi.”
As an adult Jerry worked as a proof reader and printer’s liaison, he later wrote and produced industrial sales and training films. An accomplished writer for public relations and advertising agencies, he would become Chief Marketing Officer for several prominent U.S. companies.
Jerry’s favorite authors are: (John Steinbeck) “Steinbeck could peer through a peephole of a person’s soul.” (Ernest Hemingway) “Grandpa Hemingway could establish character in a single sentence.” (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) “His Sherlock would keep me as eager for the next clue and accompanying anecdote as for the crime’s solution.” (Mark Twain) “Samuel Langhorne Clements was an irreverent observer of human foibles. His stand up was thought provoking, deceptively caustic – he was the Howard Stern of the 19th century.”
The Pompey Hollow Book Club TRAILER
FOR PRESS AND SKYPE CONTACT:
Jahoomus@yahoo.com
Leave A Comment