American Pied Piper

by Sam Foster

At the dawn of the 20th century, Beardstown, Illinois, is a city of contradiction. A town of river rats, gamblers, and rail-yard workers, it’s also filled with the accoutrements and refinements that accompany wealth . . . whatever its provenance. In Beardstown, the God-fearing don’t just live side-by-side with the sinners—they often are the sinners.

Throughout the first half of the century, the state’s attorney is always a McHugh, a Beardstown family that has spent generations fostering the town’s prosperity by keeping the balance between virtue and vice. For the McHughs, knowing when to look the other way is half the job. But when the young, Yale-educated Milt McHugh returns from WWII to take up his father’s position, he approaches the role with a very different sense of morality, as well as a desire to clean the town’s slate for good—public opinion be damned.

Forty years later, Milt is faced with a town in decline and the prospective fraud trial of a gaggle of corrupt investors known as the “Beardstown Ladies.” As he looks back on his life, his work, and the town his courage and moral fiber has created, he Was the sacrifice of freedom at the altar of decency worth the price the town has paid?

Following the people of Beardstown through a century of upheaval, renewal, and decay—and traveling from Prohibition-era Chicago to London and the Pacific during WWII to the soundstage of the Phil Donohue Show — American Pied Piper is the final chapter in a trilogy tracing the rise and fall of the American Midwest.

340 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 10, 2023

About the author

My ancestral home is a dying little port on the Illinois River. But my father was, as the ‘80s country song tells, “The next of kin to the wayward wind.” One result being that until I came to Los Angeles for college, I’d never lived for more than two years in the same place in my entire life. That was in 1962. My intention at the time was to become a vet, to drive around country roads in a pick-up truck and do for farm animals what the farmers could not do themselves. But my inability to pass organic chemistry and my draft boards clear statement that I had only 8 semesters of deferment before “going into the pool” changed my major to history.
When I was graduated I, like every other man who was graduated that year, had a choice for my graduation trip - Canada or Vietnam. My antipathy to cold weather and a little of Socrates wisdom picked up in college caused me to select the latter. So, my first job out of college was with the U.S.M.C. A few years later I was honorably discharged after 5 months in a Naval Hospital but body and spirit mostly intact.
I’ve always been a story teller, but at 24 I was not willing to “starve for art” and wanted disparately to find stability. So, I married, moved back to Los Angeles and dove into corporate America. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-forties and a divorced father of two with a house and a little money that I was brave enough to indulge my creative impulses. I’m not entirely my father’s son. I’ve got the “wayward wind” gene but mine is recessive. Aside from a year in Washington DC and a few years in New York City I’ve lived at the beach in Los Angeles my entire life. That “wayward wind” gene I inherited just makes me travel a lot, not pick up and move.
The stories I’ve always liked best have more than a plot and a couple of memorable characters, they also introduce me to an entire world I do not know. I write about things I know just so I can show you worlds you may not. My first book was about a business hustle and set in Los Angeles. My second was about the U.S.M.C. during the Vietnam era. (It is more about race in America in the 60s than killing Vietnamese.) But this story, the one that led you open this webpage and bio, is about the American I grew up with and know well, whose history I understand perhaps better than it’s present, and whom I will love until I die.
I had a friend who died a few years ago, one whose name you may have heard. It was Al Sparlis. Al was U.C.L.A.’s first football All American. He was 185# center on the 1941-42 & ‘45 teams. Al flew in three American wars. He flew with Chennault in China; he flew in Korea and was one of only 7 pilots in his squadron to come back alive; when he volunteered again during Vietnam, they told him he was to old. Al could be very forceful. They gave in and let him fly soldiers back and forth to Hawaii – live ones going over and dead ones coming back. I tell you about Al because he once said something that struck me as so profound, I’ve never forgotten it. “The measure of a man is the things he’s willing to die for.”
My stories are about the things in America men, and women, are, if not willing to die for, at very least risk all for.

Reviews

[TheQueensBooksII · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting novel I probably would not have stumbled upon if I hadn't met the author. A worthwhile read!