ABOUT THE BOOK

Melody’s Fire is a book set in the heady times of booming Northern Alberta, Canada. It offers a fresh perspective from non-traditional stake holders in what’s becoming the economical powerhouse of Canada.

When Laurie Langford, a Canadian of black ancestry, almost hits a beautiful young native girl named Melody, stranded on the side of the road, a chain of events is ignited that will change his life forever. Laurie, who is at a transitional stage in his life, is captivated by Melody’s youth, worldliness and intelligence, and she takes him on a ride into the depths of her culture that is seldom seen by outsiders.

During the course of the ride all the issues of the day are brought to the fore. Mixed marriages, cultural genocide, the environment and native land claims…and it’s all done with wit, humor and a cast of characters you’ll never forget.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christopher Cromwell is a Black Canadian brought up in Northern Ontario whose family has been in the country since the mid 1700’s, hailing from Nova Scotia. He like so many others moved initially to Edmonton, Alberta in the late seventies to find a future and has been in the province ever since. His work has taken him all over North America but primarily to Alberta’s north where he garnered a passion for the people he’s come to know there.

Christopher now resides in Calgary where he manages a business that still takes him into the far north. He has two grown children, one living in Yellowknife, NWT and a son attending Mount Royal College. Christopher is above all a family man…a family that’s anchored by his wife of 30 years, Debra Cromwell, who is not only a wife but a confidant and friend.

Bertrand is a street musician who’s often found screaming on the boulevards and squares of Amsterdam. Most chose to ignore him…that is, until his synapses line up giving him the ability to make music that is divined from the ether. It’s been said that music is one of the only activities that activates, stimulates, and uses the entire brain. Could Bertrand’s music be a conduit to our shared celestial mind"the medium bridging the conscious to the unconscious world? Many of the Gypsies and Street-people who follow him like a God believe so.

What they don’t know is that Bertrand was a child prodigy back in the US, a child of wealthy New Yorkers with an inheritance that others want to take charge of. They want him back on his meds that control his schizophrenia and render him docile, meds that close the door to his musical geniuses… and his ability to touch others to the very core of their being.

Christopher takes you into the depths of Bertrand’s world, a world sizzling with music and the characters on the fringe that make it on its most primal level. And alternately, into the world of those that could care less, whose only motivation is money. Read a sample of Chapter 1 here.

ABOUT THE BOOK

People always speculate why anyone would fall prey to the perils and self-destruction of drug use and crime. Could the cause be something that’s happening at home behind closed doors, or is something inherent in the genes? Nature or nurture, Sonny is a prime candidate to fall victim to substance abuse and murder. Who could blame him, with the cruelty heaped on him by a mother that hates him and friends that use him for their own nefarious ends?

This story is a fictionalized account of a composite of characters in the author’s life that fell off the cliff, and some that just danced around the edge. If the sixties and seventies is your era, this book should be a touchstone to your youth. If you grew up in Canada and in particular Northern Ontario at the time, it will bring you home. Enjoy the read; it’s another Cromwell classic, filled with unexpected twists and an ending that will stretch your imagination.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christopher grew up in a small mining town in Northern Ontario, Canada, in the sixties and seventies. He was at the ripe age of seventeen in 1969 the year Woodstock defined his generation. He watched the culture go from Beatles and Trudeau mania to Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. It was a great time to be young, especially in the heartland of Canada in a paycheck town where you were isolated from craziness of the Vietnam War, the Race Riots in the U.S. and the poverty of the Third World. You were special, in a special environment - a Baby Boomer that the world was focused on, part of the “me” generation that was setting the trends rather than your parents. It’s been said that if you remember the sixties you weren’t there. Well Christopher claims he does…and the story contained in these pages, fact of fiction, is one that can’t easily be forgot.

ABOUT THE BOOK

When Laurie Langford, a black Canadian businessman selling oil pumps in Texas, becomes inadvertently kidnapped and ensnared in a plot to kill Obama, a wild ride ensues that takes the reader from the cool climes of Calgary Alberta, Canada to the sultry heat of the Louisiana swamps. To find Laurie, the FBI chase goes from the rich Mexican Upper Class of Guadalajara, Mexico, to the Environmentalist of California and Washington State, but the common thread always leads back to Louisiana, a place where for centuries, a group of African Americans have been clandestinely waging a war for their very survival from a plantation they’ve secretly owned since before the Civil War. The ride is laced with poignant truths, humor and intriguing twists in every chapter…and it’s all done to the backdrop of the most exciting presidential race in U.S. history…the election of Barack Obama.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christopher Cromwell is a Canadian born black whose been traveling to the Deep South on business for many years and was inspired to write this book by the very nature and variety of the people he met during the 2009 presidential election. They all had an opinion, from the successful white businessmen that he dealt with in the front office, to the black labourers in the back of the packinghouses he visited. The one thing that stuck with him was that these people said out-loud what many only dared to think, and that was how long they thought Obama had to live…and if he’d actually get to realize his presidential aspirations without being assassinated. The Crabman is a story of that triumph and all the people in the background that may, or may not have helped him make it.

The Crabman is Cromwell’s third book. His skill as a character writer and page turning story teller is shown in the reviews of his first book, Melody’s Fire that you’ll find on his website. The main character in Melody’s Fire, Laurie Langford, is the same main character in The Crabman, which serves as a sequel to the first book.

Some of the early comments from those who have read the manuscript are:

• I never thought of Blacks as doing much other than just trying to exist – I just thought of them as having things done to them
• It made me afraid, the U.S. truly is a powder keg, and as they go, so do we all
• It made me a believer that good always triumphs and so will the U.S.
• It would make a great movie There’s some gut wrenching stuff in there, but I laughed like hell too
• All the diverse colours that makeup the richness of the African American’s culture are in this book

I believe there is a ready market for this book. All agree that there are not many books written by Blacks for Blacks who are hungry to read about themselves. This book, unlike many that deal with the Obama election, is an entertainment piece that’s not dragged down by the political angling of books written by the pundits. The Crabman is well researched and is historically accurate, but unlike other books with a political slant, Cromwell’s story telling makes for a page turning read.