Product Description
In 1971, a man calling himself D.B. Cooper hijacked a flight, claimed his ransom without harming a soul, and vanished. Elwood Reid uses this true story as a starting point, imagining Cooper as Phil Fitch, a Vietnam vet with a failed marriage who decides the time has come to do something that will save him from a life of punching timecards and wondering what could have been. Fitch ends up in Mexico, where he drifts until a bad turn of luck forces him to return home.

Meanwhile, newly retired FBI agent Frank Marshall is struggling with his new life of leisure–fishing, spending time with family, and drinking too much. Unable to let go of a few old cases, Marshall decides to help a young agent determined to solve the mystery of D. B. Cooper. As they close in and events bring Fitch back home, these two stories head for a moving climax in a smart, gripping, and frequently hilarious tale of one of America’s modern folk heroes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great Premise Falls Just a Bit Short
What a great idea!A novel that takes on the legend of D.B. Cooper.What if he did survive?Where did he go and what did he do?That's half of this interesting book by Elwood Reid and by far the best half of the book.He has created a great historical fiction character that was worth the price of this book.

Unfortunately, the story of D.B. in this book gets intertwined with the life of a newly retired FBI officer who was actually on the Cooper case when it happened.Years later, immediately after retiring he is pulled back into the case by another FBI officer who harbors a long-held interest in the case.I won't reveal how D.B. and the FBI come together in this book, but I'm afraid it detracts from the story.

Every once in awhile you come across a book that is written exceptionally well but has plot problems.This is one of those books where the main character comes alive, the descriptions and flow of the account is great but in the end, it just comes off as too improbable.Moreover, the other characters in the book just aren't as interesting as D.B. himself.

Still, I liked the book enough to recommend it and will give the author another try in the future.

Everything You Love About Reid..... plus humor?????
Admittedly, I'm biased. I've been a Reid fan for years. His hard-boiled, testosterone-filled stuff is exactly the kind of literature I thrive on, particularly because there isn't much of it out there.

So Reid fans will find all of that - plenty of beer, more than a few stops at beaten-up trailers, and some good old fashioned violence, but the pleasant surprise was Reid's humor, which has been turned up to the Nth degree.

Don't get me wrong - Reid's always been a clever writer, but it was more of the type of humor where you caught yourself smiling. There are passages in this book that are gut-splitting hilarious. I'm not going to quote them - if I was a real reviewer, I would, but this is just a guy talking about a book here. But it was great to see a new weapon in Reid's already potent arsenal.

In What Salmon Know, Reid proved himself to be a brilliant writer. In Midnight Sun, he came across as a brilliant writer learning to write a novel (which was still better than most other authors). In DB, he proves his mastery of the medium. Awesome stuff, Elwood! ... Read more

Product Description
Jack, the gritty narrator of this dark, gripping novel by Elwood Reid, is a journeyman carpenter in his late twenties whose travels have led him to Alaska. When his pink slip arrives at the end of summer, he allows himself to be talked into an unusual job. Along with his best friend, Burke, Jack accepts ten thousand dollars from a dying Fairbanks man to travel into the northern wilderness and rescue his daughter from a cult.

It doesn’t take long before their trip begins to go awry, and things only get worse once they reach the cult’s camp, where they are received with a hostility that quickly turns violent. Jack soon realizes that Burke knows more than he lets on about their mission and he finds himself on his own, desperately seeking a way out of the camp. Taut, riveting, and complex, Midnight Sun is an arctic Deliverance, a literary thriller set deep in beautiful but dark and indifferent Alaskan woods.Amazon.com Review
Penzler Pick, September 2000: When the Alaska oil boom was in full swing in the late '60s and early '70s, everyone from college students to drifters found their way up north with dreams of working on the pipeline. The work was grueling, but it was a great way to get rich quick. The boom has ended, but the way of life lingers on for the few unable to give up the life of working for six months before heading south for the rest of the year.

In Midnight Sun, Jack and his buddy, Burke, are two of the guys for whom Alaska still exerts a strong pull. When the book opens, they are building houses on an army base. Jack has worked hauling lumber and honing his carpentry skills to get to the point of what he calls "underwhelming mediocrity." On the weekends he and Burke drive north on roads owned by oil companies or the government and fish for salmon and grayling.

Before Jack heads south to Texas, Burke has one more adventure to propose. An acquaintance of his, Duke, is seriously ill and would like to see his daughter Penny again. She was wooed away by a cult some years before, and Duke will pay Jack and Burke $10,000 to rescue her, but they must trek into the interior to bring her out. Jack reluctantly agrees, and the two men battle the Alaskan wilderness, quite unprepared for the harsh conditions and the wildlife they encounter along the way. When they finally reach the camp and locate Penny, they find that their troubles are just beginning. The group she is with is much more than a new millennium cult, and it will take all of Jack and Burke's mediocre skills to survive and bring Penny home.

Elwood Reid has crafted an adventure thriller that explores a unique aspect of American life. He is a master at conveying a way of life in its death throes, the rootlessness of Jack and Burke, and the tawdriness of a boomtown gone flat. --Otto Penzler ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Blithdale Romance in Alaska
The economic boom of the oil rush brought Burke and Jack to Fairbanks Alaska. Ready to head home having grown sick of his construction job, Jack is conned into one last job by his friend Burke. The two of them will head into the Alaskan wilderness to bring back Penny at the wish of her dying father.

Coming on the heals of The Blithedale Romance, I can't help but compare Midnight Sun to Hawthorne's tale of communal living gone wrong. The cult commune that Jack and Burke find makes Blithedale look like utopia. I see a Blithedale connection in the way Jack narrates his tale of finding Penny an his time living with her until the ultimate downfall of the commune (a common theme in books like this). He sums up his time after Penny in a way reminiscent of Cloverdale's parting thoughts on Priscilla: "It didn't matter because she'd rescued me and somehow I was going to have to live with the mystery." (Midnight Sun page 270). Cloverdale's confession ends the tragic romance with "...myself ... was in love ... with ... Priscilla." (Blithedale Romance page 445).

Here though is where Jack and Miles differ as narrators: Jack never admits his feelings or emotions to himself or to his audience. He hints throughout at a connection beyond the $10,000 bounty for Penny but the closest he comes to admitting it is in that closing paragraph. Miles Cloverdale does finally come clean at the end of The Blithedale Romance.

For the most part I enjoyed Elwood Reid's style of writing and his descriptions of the Alaskan frontier. His characterization falls a little flat and there were times when Jack's narrative seems to get suck on the mundane details where I found myself either skimming or skipping a few pages. Nonetheless, I do recommend Midnight Sun.

Lost in the Dark
Elwood Reid once lived in Alaska or so says the blurb on the back of the cover.He now lives in New York. This is almost an automatic formula for a "getting away from boring Continental society to the wonderful, unexplored North" novel.And sure enough, Reid gives us a story that sounded better than it really was.

Ignore the dialogue (particularly in the first half of the book) where the two main characters talk like incoherent 12 year olds who have just discovered the "F" word along with big brother's supply of Playboys and weed in the closet. If you make it past the semi-literate conversations, the story picks up. Our heroes -Jack (narrator) and buddy Burke - are drifters who take odd jobs, get drunk, bed anything with a skirt and talk likeanarchists from Dumb & Dumber.One day Duke walks up and offers money if they will rescue daughter Penny from a cult deep in mid-Alaska.They head on up after flipping the bird to a former boss- real mature behaviour.

The second half of the book takes place at the camp, a sort of cultish backwoods hippie place where folks live in squalor, work like dogs, screw likie rabbits and have a funny way of running into a ferocious bear when trying to leave.Oh, there is also gold being mined at the camp - an action that has nothing to do with the so-called "philosophy" of the place which seems to be Conquer Your Fears Through Work.The mystery deepens when several members including daughter Penny insist they want to stay. Our heroes get separated and then we discover that Burke is not who he seems and (shock!) has other than altruistic motives in making the journey.The action toward the end raced to a conclusion where all was semi-resolved.You know the end - Penny escapes with Jack who is wiser if not richer for his venture up North.

Can't get his facts straight
As an Alaskan, I expect an author writing about Alaska to at least get the details correct. Reid has his protagonists travelling up the Dalton Highway, and then somehow ending up near Circle. A cursory glance at any map of Alaska would indicate that this makes no sense.The book is filled with many errors of this type. Well, at least as far a pg. 40, which is where I gave up on this awful tome.

Erratic
This book starts out with great promise only to quickly lose its way. Main character Jack and his buddy Burke, out of work journeyman carpenters, agree to venture to the wildest parts of Alaska to fetch back a daughter from an isolated commune or cult for her dying father. Or so it seems.

Soon enough, Jack can trust no one, and things get chilly. Winter's always looming in this book, and that's handled well by the author, as are the vivid scenery and sounds of a landscape bracing for the cold.

However, for much of the novel the northern camp itself is simply way too big a plot device. So much time is spent in so small a place, it's impossible not to wonder at the obvious: Why can't these people figure out who to trust and who not to? Why is it so hard for Jack to do something, anything? Why isn't the cult leader more convincingly charming or downright nasty? Why can't Jack, just once, wise up that something's rotten in Alaska?

Everything's just too slow, despite some genuinely nice writing. Nature (capital N) has its moments, but it's too clumsy overall to take its own place among the novel's odd playoff-sized roster of characters. Still, it's hard to shake the feeling this is Reid's first real stab at mystery writing, and a couple more tries to work out the kinks of plotting and the need for true suspense and he'll be skating down the river.

Midnight Darkness
A riveting read... a cross between "Heart of Darkness" and John Fowles' "The Magus." It captures the feeling of full-time daylight in Alaska in Summer very well, which is a mindframe that is hard to explain if you've never experienced it.

Mike Zinsley, author of The Rapture of the Deep ... Read more

Product Description
Compared by critics to such masterful storytellers as Raymond Carver, Rick Bass, and Thom Jones, Elwood Reid, author of the acclaimed novel If I Don't Six, signals a powerful presence on the American literary landscape with his knockout story collection, What Salmon Know.

Reid's characters are tough men living in a world tougher than they are. Life's disappointments fester in their hearts, dashing earnest hopes and provoking violent tendencies made manifest in bad behavior and fatalistic posturing. But there's more to these men than meets the eye, and with great emotional acuity, Reid sheds light on their opaque souls.
Amazon.com Review
Fans of Elwood Reid's football novel, If I Don'tSix, shouldn't besurprised to find his first collection full of men at the fourth downwith 10 yards to go. Not literally--in fact, there's not a gridiron insight inWhat Salmon Know. But Reid has a disarming gift for putting hischaracters into dramatically fraught situations; his sense of story isinfallible. In "Overtime," a plant manager forcefully suggests that aworkerskip his daughter's volleyball game to work a second shift; when the girlisabducted and murdered after the game, the manager is left with a lingering,life-changing sense of responsibility. The main character in "Happy Jack"is a YWCA self-defense instructor who finds himself playing predator to oneof the very students he's meant to be empowering. And in the title story,two drunken Alaskan good ol' boys watch with horror as a pair of GI's fromKentucky fillet a live salmon. Revenge on the fish's behalf is, of course,extracted. But then, Reid's men usually do come up bloody-fisted.

In more ways than one. Workingmen all, these characters live by theirhands... or what's left of them, anyway. One fellow observes a pinkie-lesscoworker: "Now he looks like everybody else on the job--tainted with thework. The closest I've come is a Sawzall across my forearm when somepimple-faced rookie got cocky and kept zipping through a crooked doorframe,forgetting I was on the other side pulling shiners."

Unfortunately, Reid doesn't always seem to know what to do with his toughtalkersonce he wrangles them into these cleverly devised scenarios. In theaftermath of tension, generalizations fly: "And now what? Hours to pushthrough. Work and water to put under some bridge?" To use another (alltoo appropriate) sports metaphor, Reid steals the ball every time, butoccasionally fails to convert. --Claire Dederer ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Depressing and painful stories written very well
Elwood Reid is a talented writer. He has a real economical style and doesn't waste words, which is something I value very much. I have an appreciation for writers who really go into exhaustive detail about every little thing, like Tom Wolfe, but I also have great respect for those who are able to condense the story into manageable pieces, which Reid is certainly good at doing. There is a bleak, gray fog hanging over this book, much like his novel "If I Don't Six." You can practically see the setting in your head: grimy, dirty, burnt-out industrial wasteland, with brown slush on the sidewalks, trash in the yards, pollution in the air, and gray, gray skies. The characters are similarly burned-out: washed up alcoholics, manual laborers, and other men whose lives never amounted to anything. "No Strings Attached" has to be the most painful to read. These stories that Reid presents, nevertheless, need to be read.

Occasionally great, sometimes not so great
Like most collections of short stories, Reid's What Salmon Know runs the gamut in quality. His ten stories here all have male protagonists, many of whom live in Alaska and work with their hands, contemptuous of the tourists who flock to Alaska in the summer and shoot anything that moves or excitedly point at the grizzly bears from their seat on the motor coach.
I really liked some of the latter stories, including "No Strings Attached", about a working class guy who is picked up in a grocery store by a beautiful girl who knows him, and who has an unusual living arrangement with her husband. "Laura Borealis" was another good one, named after a dancer who befriends our hero as he helps build a lodge for a wealthy divorced Texan who has escaped to Alaska following a nasty divorce. The Texan hires two carpenters, including our narrator and another guy with a reputation as having the foulest smelling dog in the state, from his habit of napping with his feet under the dog.
Some stories don't work so well, such as the last tale called "Random Beatings and You", which uses a bizarre present tense narration style that served no purpose. The title story, "What Salmon Know", reminded me of Reid's powerful novel Midnight Sun, in which two characters head up to a lodge in Alaska for some salmon fishing and encounter some brutal, clueless military guys who catch and then filet a live fish. Fans of tough guy short stories like Tom Franklin's Poachers and Larry Brown's Big Bad Love will undoubtedly find something here they like, as well as an occasional clunker.

Literature to get lit by.
Man I od'd on baseball quite a while back but the "All That Good Stuff" story is as funny a sports piece as I've ever read. Worth the price of the book alone. Has at least a half dozen laugh out loud linesdescribing the characters' actions/traits. Get it.

High expectations.
The story "What Salmon Know" is outstanding and should be read first to set the standard for the remaining tales which I was disappointed with. The author's below-blue-collar characters need some further depthbefore they can emerge from aflat universe into something more 3-D. Thegravitation to stereotype personas gave me concerns that the author wastrying too hard and by doing so was attempting to convince his charactersthat indeed, redemption from their unenlightened lives is impossible. TheSalmon story is another matter and rises to high art and deepthought...worth the cost of the book dispite my constant question with hisother stories: "where's he going with this and why?"

THIS IS A WRITER TO WATCH!!!
I like reading Elwood Reid. His first novel, "If I Don't Six," was excellent. So are these stories. I am an MFA student myself, and I believe Reid was one, as well as being a college football player. Hiswriting is unlike that of a lot of MFA students. He is clear, concise, andfocuses on telling a good story. Gives vivid scenes, good action, andcharacters you feel for, rather than just read about. Reid is talented, andapparently, very persistent. I read it took him 10 years of dealing withrejections before GQ published his first piece, the short story that thebook is titled after. ... Read more

Product Description
Elwood Reid first appeared on the literary stage with a powerful and bruising story called "What Salmon Know," which appeared in the March 1997 issue of GQ.  Here was a writer not afraid to examine the soulful underside of the American male, or the violence that accompanies disappointed dreams.  Now, in his first, extraordinary novel, Reid tells the story of Elwood Riley, a six-foot-six, 275-pound blue-collar kid whose ticket out of Cleveland is a "full ride" football scholarship to the University of Michigan.

But Riley is cursed with intelligence and an awareness of the vicious inhumanity of the college football system.  If Riley doesn't want to "six"--lose his scholarship or get maimed--he has to become a "fella," a pain-loving freak too nihilistic to care what he does to himself or others.  And after Riley encounters the alluring, mysteriously damaged Kate, his dilemma becomes ever more painful.

Elwood Reid's portrait of this world is at once blackly humorous, starkly tragic, and perfectly detailed.  With deft strokes, he portrays emotionally stunted coaches who have mastered the art of humiliating and manipulating young men, groupies attracted to the fame but undone by the shocking cruelty of the players, and the athletes themselves, who grow addicted to violence, alcohol, and steroids, too caught up in the glory of playing for Big Blue to notice they are mere meat to the coaches and the university.

In tough, spare, beautiful prose that should invite comparisons to the works of Thom Jones and Denis Johnson, Reid describes a place where young men damage their souls and their bodies in pursuit of a worthless glamor.  This is a profound, unsettling book about a familiar yet hidden world--a Greek tragedy in cleats.Amazon.com Review
What is it about the Great Lakes State? In this searingly darkand funny first novel, Reid, once a lineman for the University ofMichigan Wolverines, puts the college gridiron to the fire the wayformer Dallas Cowboy Pete Gent, once a receiver for the Michigan StateSpartans, did years ago for the pros in his rollicking classic, North DallasForty. Reid's protagonist, Elwood Riley, like Reid himself, isa block-of-granite, working-class kid who assumes he's reached life'send zone when his high school exploits nab him a football scholarshipto Michigan. But he's got brains to match his brawn, and a growingawareness of himself and beyond himself that's desperate to breakfree. In the locker rooms and huddles of Big College, Cash Cow,move-'em-through-the-system football, even a little awarenessencroaches into rah-rah values; it sends the metaphysical penaltyflags flying.

What Riley sees around him is that the systemstinks. Winning isn't just everything, it's the Holy Grail. Hissmall-minded coaches will stop at nothing--steroids, humiliation,pain, abuse--to grab it, nor will his teammates (with nicknames likeNapalm, what do you expect--serenity and circumspection?), and theuniversity sees him as little more than fuel for the "Big Blue"machine on its ineffable march to the Rose Bowl. The Six of thetitle is a reference to both 86-ing, screwing up so you lose yourscholarship, or deep-sixing, getting killed trying to hold ontoit. Reid's biting prose and insider's ability to bring an outsiderinto the often unreal absurdity of big-time college sports will havereaders alternately rooting for Riley to beat the system and rootingfor him to get out alive and in one piece. It's that texturedcomplexity that sends Six deep, elevating it to a highernumber. --Jeff Silverman ... Read more

Customer Reviews (18)

Interesting things to know about college football
This book was interesting. I found it very fun to read. The many things that college football players go through at a big time school were funny. Some were gross. It entertained me though. The story itself was a little sketchy here and there, and jumped forward too fast at certain times I thought. I found that there were gaps in the story that left me wondering if more should have been explained about this or that, but each reader should decide that for themselves. If you have ever wondered what an athlete sometimes has to go through at a college, then this may start to enlighten you a little. It's by no means a tell all tale of sports, just one mans view of the collegiate system, a view that I found fun to read.

Realistic?
This book was dissapointing to me for several reasons. The most evident of which was its lack of realism.Coaches constantly were either swearing at or hitting players. Every collision ended in blood, broken bones, etc. NowI am aware that coaches establish discipline and that football is a violentgame. But if the game were as this author describes it, who would want toplay it? Unfortunately, this author's description is way off base.To befair, this book is Fiction, so it is the author's right to "livenup" a story in order to make it more entertaining for the reader.Buthis use of real college teams leads one to believe that the story has acertain element of reality, which this book did not have. I was shocked tosee how many of the other reviewers finished this book and believe they nowhave a better insight on Div. 1 football and men's behavior in general.Ifyou want a real look at life as a Division 1 football player, try KenDenlinger's (For the Glory). If you want fantasy, I will give you my copyof this book. I don't have a use for it.

Readable but repetitive
Working from his own experiences as a Michigan Wolverine, Reid's story of life within a successful university football program presents a downbeat and ugly view of the college game that stands in stark contrast to theplayer work ethic evident in For The Glory and A Civil War. Reid's namesakehero is Elwood Reilly, an athlete cursed with a brain and a conscience (butalso an uncanny self-destructive streak), whose refusal to conform with theanimalistic behaviour of the other "fellas" of the team endangers hisfootball scholarship, the only means by which he can escape the grind ofdaily working-class existence that is slowly destroying his father.Elwood's experience of his teammates' sordid and criminal off-field anticsnot only strips away college football's idealized pageantry in brutalfashion, but moreover starts him on a path of inward contemplation thatleaves him trapped and wondering what else he has in life besides football.Unsurprisingly, If I Don't Six is a very male book; however, the scandalousmisadventures of Reilly's teammates quickly become tiresome. All too oftenas well the book lapses into teen melodrama, particularly when Reilly hasto decide between staying with his vapid longtime girlfriend Heather, orinstead following his attraction towards the more mysterious and unorthodoxKate. Although highly readable, Reid's novel in the end generates only apassing interest within the reader, and fails to say anything new about thedilemmas of college football or of life in the American Midwest.

introspective, muckraking expose of "big-time" football
This is a disturbing, unsettling novel, one which will not make friends with those who believe in the myth of the All-American boy and the notionthat collegiate athletics are populated by "student-athletes." Indeed, If I Don't Six compels the reader to examine not only the financialcorruption of collegiate football, but it forces the reader to sadly ponderthe corruption of many young men who prostate themselves at the altar ofmind-numbingly dumb coaches.Anti-intellectualism and body-breakingcomepte for attention in this tightly written and fatalistic novel.As Iapproached the conclusion, I marveled that the author lived to speak abouthis experiences, rueful of the enormous costs he has paid.

Not enough depth about playing div. I college football.
This book provided a good look at what it's like to be involved in big-time division I college football.Unfortunately, this is only one part of the book, and the only good part.There are a number of side storiesthat have nothing to do with the story, and are quite ridiculous.There isa lot of fluff around what could have been a great book.It's an easyread.I read it quickly because I kept waiting for it to get better.Iwas very disappointed.If you want to learn about football, buy a bookwritten by Tim Green. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Elwood Reid, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1315 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Public Personnel Management, published by International Personnel Management Association on June 22, 2000. The length of the article is 6904 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Large-Scale Performance-Driven Training Needs Assessment : A Case Study.
Author: Elwood F. Holton III
Publication: Public Personnel Management (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 2000
Publisher: International Personnel Management Association
Volume: 29Issue: 2Page: 253

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more