I’m including the intro to my unfinished book. Let me know what you think.

Peace,

Dick

Engineers are supposed to be boring, and I assume that for the previous three plus decades I fulfilled that perception. But in reality, most of are boring, especially when we talk about work. However, almost magically, once I moved into my second career and became a writer, that all changed. I became interesting.

Why are writers considered interesting? The answer, I believe, is that we live in a world out of the ordinary. Fiction writers create their world while nonfiction writers delve into areas hidden from most. People turn to books to escape the ordinary. While they might say they want to receive knowledge or be entertained, deep down where the truth can’t hide they know they want to journey into another realm.

My first book was about a remarkable lady who saw the conditions in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky and chose to do something to help. I was asked to speak to several groups and a local newspaper ran a full page story about the book. I was interesting.

I created a You Tube video, got a website, started a blog, obtained a twitter account, because people were interested—not only in me but in the people in Appalachia.

Then I heard about Jerry Allen LeQuire, a man I thought was interesting, and was shocked when I discovered that I was nearly alone with that thought. He was in prison and nearly forgotten. Did this make him any less interesting?

Jerry was serving 56 years on various charges relating to his drug smuggling career in the 1980’s. At the time of his arrest, he was the largest cocaine smuggler in the southeast and had accumulated about $400 million. Authorities claimed he had hidden $280 million and dug up a farm looking for the money. None was found. This alone made him interesting.

So I contacted him and we began to talk. Our visits became more frequent and we began writing emails. I soon understood that I was becoming the student and he was the teacher. And the prison was my classroom. As we got into the details of his marijuana and cocaine smuggling career, I found myself more and more wanting to know about other things. What about the people he had met in his thirty years of incarceration, what were his thoughts about God and spiritual matters, what were his views on—well, the list of questions was long.

For most of his time in prison, no one cared much about him. His second wife had betrayed him and was in witness protection, many of his friends had turned against him to reduce prison time, and he was estranged from his family.

He told me stories about prison life, like when he was at Marion, which at that time was a super max prison, he remained in lockdown for 10 years. Marion was the worst, he explained. After two guards were murdered, goon squads from other prisons would be sent to randomly beat prisoners.

I listened and realized that there was a lost society in America that few knew about; those in prison. And I wondered why we had allowed something like this to happen.

My opinions do not always make me popular. Many people have strong ideas (often false) about punishment. I have suggestions, if asked, but don’t know if they are anything but because the problem can’t be solved by an equation. Answers don’t come readily.

I have spent well over a hundred hours talking with Jerry and have listened to him talk about everything from murder to politics. He has made me think about my own life, my choices, and especially my relationship to the rest of the world.

So, as I wrote the book (and I enjoyed the process) I knew it would have to more than just the story of drug smuggling and his relationship with both the CIA and Medellin cartel leaders. It would be about the vagaries of life—both his and mine. I came to understand that sometimes there is a fine line between the American dream and the American nightmare.