Bestselling author Robert Dugoni, along with co-authors Jeff Langholz and Chris Crabtree, will discuss their new World War II novel, Hold Strong.

Robert Dugoni is the New York Times bestselling author of the Tracy Crosswhite series; the Charles Jenkins series; the David Sloane series; several standalone novels, including A Killing on the Hill, The World Played Chess, and The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell. Dugoni is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Book Award for fiction, a multi-time winner of the Friends of Mystery Spotted Owl Award for best novel set in the Pacific Northwest, and a finalist for many other awards. 

Jeff Langholz, PhD, is an award-winning teacher, researcher, entrepreneur, and writer whose work has appeared in more than 250 media outlets. His adventures span five continents and include stints as a rice farmer in West Africa with the Peace Corps, a Fulbright Scholar in South Africa, a salmon fisherman in Alaska, a tree farmer in Central America, and a mediator in New York. Chris Crabtree teaches middle and high school English language arts and literature at Costa Rica International Academy in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. 

Hold Strong is an epic and inspiring novel—based on true events—about love, heroism, and resilience during the darkest chapters of World War II. Sam Carlson is a projectionist in small-town Minnesota, where fantasies unspool in glorious black and white—for him and for his sweetheart, college-bound math whiz Sarah Haber. When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, Sam is sent to the Philippines and captured as a POW. Brutalized but unbroken by the Bataan Death March and POW camps, Sam is one of eighteen hundred starved and weakened prisoners herded into the cargo hold of a barbaric hell ship called the Arisan Maru, his survival doubtful. Determined to use her math skills on the home front, Sarah is recruited to Washington, DC, into the covert field of code breaking. When Sarah intercepts a message about a Japanese convoy, the US Navy’s mission is clear: sink the Arisan Maru and send it to the bottom of the South China Sea. Now, the lives of the two young lovers are about to inadvertently collide in one of the most shocking acts of World War II. Anchored in an extraordinary true story and breathlessly re-created, Hold Strong is a one-of-a-kind novel that explores faith, courage, survival, and coming home against insurmountable odds.

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Presented in partnership with the Tewksbury Public Library. If interested, you may purchase a copy of this book from the event's bookstore partner, Wellesley Books. Book sales will help support future virtual author events.