Press Release
St. Louis County Library Foundation’s Favorite Author Series presents award-winning suspense writer Peter Blauner, author the new novel “Picture in the Sand.”
The event will take place on Tuesday, January 24 at 7:00 p.m. at the Grant’s View Branch, 9700 Musick Rd., St. Louis MO, 63123.
The program is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase at the event from Left Bank Books.
"On rare occasions I read a book that reminds me of why I fell in love with storytelling in the first place. This is such a book." —Stephen King
Peter Blauner's epic “Picture in the Sand” is a sweeping intergenerational saga told through a grandfather's passionate letters to his grandson, passing on the story of his political rebellion in 1950s Egypt in order to save his grandson's life in a post-9/11 world.
When Alex Hassan gets accepted to an Ivy League university, his middle-class Egyptian-American family is filled with pride and excitement. But that joy turns to shock when they discover that he’s run off to the Middle East to join a holy war instead. When he refuses to communicate with everyone else, his loving grandfather Ali emails him one last plea. If Alex will stay in touch, his grandfather will share with Alex – and only Alex – a manuscript containing the secret story of his own life that he’s kept hidden from his family, until now.
It's the tale of his romantic and heartbreaking past rooted in Hollywood and the post-revolutionary Egypt of the 1950s, when young Ali was a movie fanatic who attained a dream job working for the legendary director Cecil B. DeMille on the set of his epic film, “The Ten Commandments.” But Ali’s vision of a golden future as an American movie mogul gets upended when he is unwittingly caught up in a web of politics, espionage, and real-life events that change the course of history.
It's a narrative he’s told no one for more than a half-century. But now he’s forced to unearth the past to save a young man who’s about to make the same tragic mistakes he made so long ago.
Peter Blauner is an Edgar-winning, New York Times bestselling author of several other novels, including “Slow Motion Riot,” “The Intruder,” and “Sunrise Highway.” His books have been translated into twenty languages. “Picture in the Sand” is the culmination of two decades of writing and research that took him from Brooklyn to Cairo a half-dozen times.
Program sites are accessible. With at least two weeks' notice, accommodations will be made for persons with disabilities. Call 314-994-3300 or contact us.