Friends of the Mendocino College Library, an affiliate of the Mendocino College Foundation, are hosting mystery author Waights Taylor Jr. for its third reading in the spring reading series. He will be reading from his new novel, Touch of Redemption, on Thursday, April 21st at 7 PM in Room 4210, upstairs in the new college library. The college is located at 1000 Hensley Creek Rd. in Ukiah. Admission to the event is free.

In Touch of Redemption, the second book in the Joe McGrath and Sam Rucker Detective Novels, the two men embark on a difficult journey—an attempt to find the murderers of Joe’s father twenty-five years ago. It is 1948 in segregated Alabama, and Joe, a white man, and Sam, a black man, face numerous obstacles, the least of which is the racism and bigotry of the time, while struggling with the challenges of solving a murder case a quarter century old.

New York Times Best Selling Author Sheldon Siegel said this about his first mystery, Kiss of Salvation, “Kiss of Salvation takes us back to the dawn of the Civil rights movement in 1947 Birmingham. It’s a murder mystery, a history, and an in-depth study of evolving times in the American South. Deftly written and immensely readable, Taylor paints a picture of a complex era in American culture. Highly recommended.”

Waights Taylor Jr. was born in Birmingham, Alabama and spent his young, formative years growing up in the segregated South. After graduation from the University of Alabama in 1959 with a B.S. degree in Aeronautical Engineering, his professional career included twenty-four years in the aviation industry and then twenty-two years in management consulting. When his professional career was coming to an end, he turned to writing. He is an author, a poet, and a playwright. His first book, Alfons Mucha's Slav Epic: An Artist's History of the Slavic People, was published in 2008. His first chapbook of poetry and short stories, Literary Ramblings, was published in 2010. His second book, Our Southern Home: Scottsboro to Montgomery to Birmingham--The Transformation of the South in the Twentieth Century, was published in October 2011. Touch of Redemption was released in March 2016. He now lives in Santa Rosa, California.

For more information about the reading or the author, please check the college web site at www.mendocino.edu or call John Koetzner (707) 468-3051.