State highlighted in recent books
Several local authors recently have published books.
• The Ozark Blood Series by Thomas S. Mulvaugh follows former Kansas City detective Rick Ryder — who won the largest Powerball jackpot, $1 billion. With his best friend and girlfriend he now takes cases for those that can’t afford a private detective, by charging only a dollar a day. This second book in the series, Blood Curse, a serial killer is loose in Eureka Springs. Ryder also has been placed in charge of a decades-old mystery of two missing teenagers, who have been found on Ryder’s old family farm in Cassville, Mo., with each teenager shot in the head. Blood Curse will be released and available for purchase Oct. 1.
• The Freedom Song by Mike Jordan is the result of a 1989 conversation with his 92-year-old great-grandmother, who told him the Bohannans of Bohannan Mountain, Ark., were a stop on the Underground Railroad. The novel is based on a true story that tells the story from the perspective of the Bohannans and their patriarch Henderson Bohannan — who lived on a mountainous plateau near Huntsville — and the escaped slaves from Lakeport Plantation in southeastern Arkansas.
The Freedom Song is the second book in the author’s Lost Heroes Series. Crockett’s Coin, the first installment that launches the Henderson Bohannan story from a Tennessee perspective, was also released this summer.
• Suzie Belle and the Dress Dilemma (Infinity Publishing) by Ann Averitt and Paula Caten, teachers recently retired from the Rogers School District, is about a little girl who wore a dress to school every day. When she opened her closet door, the dresses each vied for her attention and begged to be the one chosen to go to school with her. At the end of the week, she felt sorry for Satin, the dress that did not get to go anywhere all week, so she planned something special for her.
The book is illustrated by Les Galusha, who provided the visual effects for the very popular movie, Greater, now showing in area theaters.
Design Center
wins awards
Two projects by the University of Arkansas Community Design Center and its collaborators have received 2016 American Architecture Awards from The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Center for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The winning projects, the Texarkana Art Park and the Conway urban watershed plan, are the ninth and 10th Community Design Center projects to receive American Architecture Awards. The center is an outreach program of Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design.
The Community Design Center collaborated with Marlon Blackwell Architects, a Fayetteville-based firm, for the Texarkana Art Park in Texarkana, Texas. The revitalization links the Perot Theater, City Hall and Regional Arts Center. The park will focuses on four main areas: a farmers market, band shell, amphitheater and art walk. Project planning was partly funded by a $100,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The second winning project, the “Conway Urban Watershed Framework Plan: A Reconciliation Landscape,” addresses severe water management problems in Conway. The plan employs green infrastructure to deliver ecosystem services and provides planning tools for urban watersheds that combine a sponge-city gradient, water treatment technologies, the 17 ecosystem services and six adaptive infrastructure types. This project is a collaboration between the Community Design Center and Marty Matlock, executive director of the UA office for sustainability and professor of ecological engineering in the department of biological and agricultural engineering. The three-year project was funded by a $498,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — administered by the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission — and matching funds from the city of Conway, Faulkner County, the University of Central Arkansas and the Lake Conway Property Owners Association.
Rogers school
reunion set
The annual fall reunion of former students, teachers and administrators of the old Rogers Public High School in the 500 block of West Walnut Street in Rogers will be held from 9 a.m. to noon Oct. 1 in the Tillery Elementary gym. Former students are requested to contribute $3 to cover the cost of the custodian who sets up and cleans the gym for the reunion.
Information: (479) 936-9852.
1966 Springdale
reunion planned
Springdale High School Class of 1966 plans a reunion for noon Oct. 1 the AQ Chicken House in Springdale. Dinner will be at the Elks Club, 4444 Crossover Road in Fayetteville, costing $25 per person.
Information: (479) 871-1105.