American Pie

<p>Among my ancestors first on my mother's side then my father's are a Mohawk Indian chief and the burgermeister of a northern German village. Thayendanegea aka Joseph Brant fought valiantly against the Americans in the Revolutionary War. He died in 1807 and a Canadian general hospital in Burlington Ontario carries his name today. I never learned the burgermeister's name. As a boy growing up in western Pennsylvania my grandparents explained to me that he had been shot to death in 1935 two years before I was born for publicly speaking out against Adolph Hitler. The chief and the burgermeister inspired me to write what will likely be my last work of fiction American Pie. I believe the novel to be rooted in truth about its subjects: greed bigotry cruelty friendship love and compassion hypocrisy and politics - a grim satirical sometimes comic allegory speaking to our troubled world's past present and seemingly inevitable future. The story's major theme is expressed in the introductory epigraph a single sentence from British philosopher Bertrand Russell: <em>Collective fear stimulates herd instinct and tends to produce ferocity toward those not regarded as members of the herd.</em></p><p>MB</p>