Author Description

Product Description Way Off 1st Avenue is a novel that is both sexual and romantic, but includes neither sex nor romance. On its most basic level, this is travel story and a love affair with the blurry images that pass by the windows of a car. It's a story of U-Hauls, magic apples, and thoughtful dragonflies. It will take you to places you've never imagined - even a land where everyone is called pedro. Along the 31 days and 15,000 miles, you'll encounter life's three great questions: 1) What is the mystery of chocolate cake 2) Can love exist in a bottle of pancake syrup, and 3) How does a person become human again when all of their memories are sad....The answers to these questions and others are found Way Off 1st Avenue. About the Author Prior to writing this novel, Thomas Grover Land was an oceanographer, an epidemiologist, a dishwasher, and a professor of psychology. He was born in Illinois and still has an identical twin living there. Although Mr. Land has never harvested wheat or picked heads of lettuce, he has led an Itinerant life - living in twelve states and accumulating a large number of frequent flyer miles. His imagination currently lives on Ocracoke, North Carolina. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. The radio said the levees broke near Alton, Illinois this morning. It was strange hearing that name again, because my grandfather lived in Alton when he was young -- just long enough to meet Robert Pershing Wadlow, the tallest man in history. There's a statue of Wadlow in the Alton town cemetery. It's a life-size 8 feet, 11 inches. Wadlow is buried a few feeet away in a piano crate. Just after the "Great War", Wadlow was paraded from one small town to the next. Local boys paid for the chance to grab a silver dollar from the top of his head. Each time, Wadlow would take off his glasses, squint into the sun, lean against a wall, and wait. The coin wasn't that high, but the excitement of the moment made most of t