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William Elliott Hazelgrove

Born: 1959 in Richmond, Virginia
Pen Name: William Hazelgrove

Connection to Illinois: Hazelgrove's family moved to Chicago when he was fourteen. After college, he returned to the Chicago area. He currently resides in St. Charles.

Biography: William Hazelgrove is the National Bestselling author of ten novels and nine nonfiction titles. His books have received starred reviews in Publisher Weekly Kirkus,Booklist, Book of the Month Selections, ALA Editors Choice Awards Junior Library Guild Selections, Literary Guild Selections, History Book Club Selections and optioned for the movies. He was the Ernest Hemingway Writer in Residence where he wrote in the attic of Ernest Hemingway’s birthplace. He has written articles and reviews for USA Today, The Smithsonian Magazine, and other publications and has been featured on NPR All Things Considered. The New York Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, CSPAN, USA Today have all covered his books with features. His books Tobacco Sticks, The Pitcher, Real Santa, and Madam President have been optioned for screen and television rights. His book Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson is currently in development He has four forthcoming books. Sally Rand American Sex Symbol, Morristown The Kidnapping of George Washington. The Brilliant Con of Cassie Chadwick. One Hundred and Sixty Minutes, the Race to Save.


Awards:
  • '''''Forging A President'''''
  • -- History Book Club Selection
  • '''''Madame President'''''
  • -- Literary Guild Selection
  • -- History Book Club Selection
  • -- Editors Pick, Foreword Reviews
  • '''''Real Santa'''''
  • -- Starred Review, Booklist
  • -- Starred Review, Booklist
  • '''''The Pitcher'''''
  • -- Selection for Fall, Junior Library Guild
  • -- Bestseller List for Hispanic Fiction, Amazon
  • -- Bestseller List for Baseball, Amazon
  • '''''Tobacco Sticks'''''
  • -- Starred Review, Publishers Weekly
  • -- Book of the Month Club Selection
  • '''''Ripples'''''
  • -- Editor's Choice Award, ALA Booklist
  • "The Noble Train"
  • -- Winner, Annual Book Prize, Society of Colonial Wars Presentation, 2021

Primary Literary Genre(s): Non-Fiction

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

Blog: http://www.theviewfromhemingwaysattic.com/
Website: http://www.billhazelgrove.com/index.html


Selected Titles

Al Capone and the 1933 World's Fair :
ISBN: 1442272260 OCLC: 987376366

"William Elliot Hazelgrove provides the exciting and sprawling history behind the 1933 World's Fair, the last of the golden age. He reveals the story of the six millionaire businessmen, dubbed the Secret Six, who beat Al Capone at his own game, ending the gangster era as Prohibition was repealed. He also details the story of an intriguing woman, Sally Rand, who embodied the ideals of the World's Fair with her own rags-to-riches story and brought sex into the open, as well as the story of Rufus and Charles Dawes, who gave the fair a theme and found financing during the worst economic times the country had ever experienced."--Jacket.

Forging a President :
ISBN: 1621574768 OCLC: 955019962

Evaluates the years Teddy Roosevelt spent as a cattle rancher and deputy sheriff in Dakota Territory that influenced his character as president, sharing insights into how his achievements were shaped by the nature and culture he experienced firsthand.

Henry Knox's noble train :
ISBN: 163388614X OCLC: 1141968398

"During the brutal winter of 1775-1776, an untested Boston bookseller named Henry Knox commandeered an oxen train hauling sixty tons of cannons and other artillery from Fort Ticonderoga near the Canadian border. He and his men journeyed some three hundred miles south and east over frozen, often-treacherous terrain to supply George Washington for his attack of British troops occupying Boston. The result was the British surrender of Boston and the first major victory for the Colonial Army. This is one of the great stories of the American Revolution, still little known by comparison with the more famous battles of Concord, Lexington, and Bunker Hill. Told with a novelist's feel for narrative, character, and vivid description, The Noble Train brings to life the events and people at a time when the ragtag American rebels were in a desperate situation. Washington's army was withering away from desertion and expiring enlistments. Typhoid fever, typhus, and dysentery were taking a terrible toll. There was little hope of dislodging British General Howe and his 20,000 British troops in Boston--until Henry Knox arrived with his supply convoy of heavy armaments. Firing down on the city from the surrounding Dorchester Heights, these weapons created a decisive turning point. An act of near desperation fueled by courage, daring, and sheer tenacity led to a tremendous victory for the cause of independence. This exciting tale of daunting odds and undaunted determination highlights a pivotal episode that changed history."--

Jack Pine :
ISBN: 9781633930841 OCLC: 881661269

Köehler Books, Virginia Beach : ©2015.

When the sixteen year old daughter of a prominent attorney is raped in a woodshed and a logger found shot the next morning, Deputy Sheriff Reuger London becomes embroiled in a war between environmentalists, the Ojibwa Indians fighting for their timber rights, and the ruthless son of a powerful logger. Ben Johnson is the biggest logger in the Northwoods and his son Cliff will soon take over the business. Logging is dying a slow death from environmental restrictions and all that's left are the scrub firs and jackpine. But far up in the Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota are trees called the Old Pines. These three hundred year Norwegian pines are priceless and Johnson Timber wants them. A radical leader of Earth First, Tom Jorde, will do anything to stop the logging in the Boundary Waters. Then another logger is murdered and Jorde is implicated. The town pressures Reuger to stop the environmentalist and arrest an Indian, Tommy Toboken, for the rape of the girl. Tommy had saved his life once before and Reuger knows he is being setup. When he falls in love with the lawyer brought to town to defend Tom Jorde and realizes Johnson Timber is going to log out the Federally protected trees, Reuger is torn between old loyalties and what is right. (William Hazelgrove).

Madam President :
ISBN: 162157475X OCLC: 938991702

An up-close look at Edith Wilson, a first lady with unequaled responsibilities during her husband's presidency. After President Woodrow Wilson suffered a paralyzing stroke in the fall of 1919, his wife, First Lady Edith Wilson, began to handle the day-to-day responsibilities of the chief executive. Mrs. Wilson had had little formal education and had only been married to President Wilson for four years, yet in the tenuous peace following the end of World War I, she dedicated herself to managing the office of the president, reading all correspondence intended for her bedridden husband. Though her Oval Office authority was acknowledged in Washington circles at the time--one senator called her "the presidentress who had fulfilled the dream of suffragettes by changing her title from First Lady to Acting First Man"--Her legacy as the first woman president is now largely forgotten. William Hazelgrove's Madam President is a vivid, engaging portrait of the woman who became the acting president of the United States in 1919, months before women officially won the right to vote.

Mica highways
ISBN: 0553106392 OCLC: 39261932

Bantam Books, New York : 1998.

A stockbroker abandons the rat race in Chicago to return to the South and devote himself to the history of his family. In this way Charlie Tidewater discovers an interesting grandfather and a murder. By the author of Tobacco Sticks.

Morristown: The Darkest Winter of the Revolutionary War and the Plot to Kidnap George Washington
ISBN: 149305662X OCLC: 1227917577

In the fall of 1779 George Washington took his 10,000 men into winter camp at Morristown, New Jersey after six long years of fighting. It would be a brutal winter of suffering, depression, starvation, betrayal, mutiny, treason and an attempt to kidnap George Washington by the British. By the spring only 8,000 men would be left in Morristown with less than two thirds fit for service. Books have cemented Valley Forge as one with Omaha Beach, the Death March of Bataan, and Washington crossing the Delaware. But the winter of Valley Forge was mild in comparison to other winters. Temperatures did not plummet to unheard levels and snowfall was normal. And the men were not starving on the scale that would later follow at Morristown. The winter of 1779 to 1780 was the worst in a century and would mark Washington’s darkest hour where he contemplated the army coming apart from lack of food and, money, six years of war, desertions, mutiny, the threat of a devastating attack by the British, and incredibly, a plot to kidnap him. And yet Morristown would mark a turning point. After a long winter of suffering, he was joined by Lafayette in May who promised Washington a second fleet of French support, leading to the final defeat of the British in 1783.

My best year /
ISBN: 163393151X OCLC: 941068393

One Hundred and Sixty Minutes: The Race to Save the RMS Titanic
ISBN: 1633886972 OCLC: 1227917821

"One hundred and sixty minutes. That is all the time rescuers would have before the largest ship in the world slipped beneath the icy Atlantic. There was amazing heroism and astounding incompetence against the backdrop of the most advanced ship in history sinking by inches with luminaries from throughout the world. It is a story of a network of wireless operators on land and sea who desperately sent messages back and forth across the dark frozen North Atlantic to mount a rescue mission. More than twenty-eight ships would be involved in the rescue of Titanic survivors, along with four different countries. This is a detailed and all-encompassing look at the Titanic rescue mission"--

Real Santa
ISBN: 9781938467943 OCLC: 877844749

George Kronenfeldt is an unemployed engineer with one shot to keep his daughter's belief in Santa intact. When Megan tells him the only way she will believe in Santa is if she can videotape him and then tells her fourth grade class she will prove the existence of Santa Claus by posting her video to YouTube, George realizes he must become the Real Santa. He devises a plan to land nine reindeer on his roof and go down his chimney, hiring a broken down movie director who eventually has him funding a full scale production that bankrupts him and threatens his marriage. When George goes to find the Real Santa to help him, the line between what is real and magic is crossed. Real Santa is a funny heartwarming story of parenthood gone wrong and illuminates what lengths parents will go to keep their children happy.

Ripples /
ISBN: 0963005294 OCLC: 25696324

Pantonne Press, Chicago : [1992]

Brenton and Christian grow up together in Baltimore. Brenton moves away and after four years of separation the two friends are reunited. But things have changed, and Brenton comes to realize Christian's tragic weakness as well as his own.

Rocket Man /
ISBN: 1938467582 OCLC: 823044828

Koehler Books, New York : ©2013.

We meet Dale Hammer, who becomes the Rocket Man for his sons scout troop and immediately his life implodes. Accused of cutting down the subdivision sign to his neighborhood, he becomes the lone rebel, going down in a flaming arc. When Rocket Day comes, Dale is determined to give his son more than his father gave him.

Sally Rand :
ISBN: 1493038591 OCLC: 1082458205

"Her name was Sally Rand. Until now, there has not been a biography of Sally Rand. But you can draw a line from her to Lana Turner, Marilyn Monroe, Raquel Welch, Ann-Margaret, Madonna, and Lady Gaga. She broke the mold in 1933 by proclaiming the female body as something beautiful and taking it out of the strip club with her ethereal fan dance. She was a poor girl from the Ozarks who ran away with a carnival, then joined the circus, and finally made it to Hollywood, where Cecil B. DeMille set her on the road to fame in silent movies. When the talkies came, her career collapsed and she ended up in Chicago, broke and sleeping in alleys. Two ostrich feathers in a secondhand store rescued her from obscurity." -- dust jacket

Seventh inning stretch :
ISBN: 1633930025 OCLC: 908071914

Koehler Books, [Place of publication not identified] : 2015.

Ricky is a senior and all seems to be going well when Bailey Hutchinson moves in from Texas and has an almost hundred mile an hour fastball. Fernando comes back and demands money from Ricky when he hears MLB Scouts are interested in him. After a bad pitch hits him in the head he has to go back to throwing rocks with The Pitcher to find himself again.

Shots fired in terminal 2 :
ISBN: 9781633883833 OCLC: 1029086864

Though focused on one terrifying incident that the author witnessed, this story is also a prototype of American shootings showing the interplay of victims, police, media, the shooter, and what constitutes this peculiar American form of violence.

The bad author /
ISBN: 1612965687 OCLC: 922932283

"A literary-thriller penned in the motif of a Raymond Chandler mystery. This rollercoaster ride of a novel is centered on cop/author Derek Pelican who investigates the murder of a writer in an alley in Chicago. Adding to the murder mayhem, a literary agent turns up dead in Lake Michigan and then a prominent editor is murdered. As it turns out, a disgruntled author is behind the killings and Derek Pelican must work around the clock to stop him before he kills again. The Bad Author takes us on a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants ride from Chicago to New York to find out who is behind the killing of literary agents, writers, and publishers. A smart man's mystery, The Bad Author is the first in a series of more novels to come featuring Derek Pelican."--provided by Amazon.com.

The pitcher /
ISBN: 1938467590 OCLC: 854713591

The Pitcher, is a classic story of baseball, the price of dreams, and the lessons of life. A mythic baseball story about a broken down World Series Pitcher is mourning over the death of his wife and an under-priveledged Mexican-American boy who lives across the street and wants to learn to pitch. This is a mainstream contemporary novel about dreams lost and found.

Tobacco sticks
ISBN: 0553575597 OCLC: 37317563

Bantam Books, New York : 1997, ©1995.

Wright brothers, wrong story :
ISBN: 1633884589 OCLC: 1028821113

"This book is the first deconstruction of the Wright Brothers' myth. They were not--as we have all come to believe--two halves of the same apple. Each had a distinctive role in creating the first 'flying machine'."--Provided by publisher.

 

 

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