American Pied Piper

<p style=margin: 0; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman" serif; color: rgba(0 0 0 1)><strong>At the dawn of the 20</strong><sup><strong>th</strong></sup><strong> century Beardstown Illinois is a city of contradiction. </strong>A town of river rats gamblers and rail-yard workers it's also filled with the accoutrements and refinements that accompany wealth . . . whatever its provenance. In Beardstown the God-fearing don't just live side-by-side with the sinners-they often are the sinners.</p><p style=margin: 0; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman" serif; color: rgba(0 0 0 1)><br></p><p style=margin: 0; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman" serif; color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Throughout the first half of the century the state's attorney is always a McHugh a Beardstown family that has spent generations fostering the town's prosperity by keeping the balance between virtue and vice. For the McHughs knowing when to look the other way is half the job. But when the young Yale-educated Milt McHugh returns from WWII to take up his father's position he approaches the role with a very different sense of morality as well as a desire to clean the town's slate for good-public opinion be damned.</p><p style=margin: 0; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman" serif; color: rgba(0 0 0 1)><br></p><p style=margin: 0; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman" serif; color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Forty years later Milt is faced with a town in decline and the prospective fraud trial of a gaggle of corrupt investors known as the Beardstown Ladies. As he looks back on his life his work and the town his courage and moral fiber has created he wonders: Was the sacrifice of freedom at the altar of decency worth the price the town has paid?</p><p style=margin: 0; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman" serif; color: rgba(0 0 0 1)><br></p><p style=margin: 0; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman" serif; color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Following the people of Beardstown through a century of upheaval renewal and decay-and traveling from Prohibition-era Chicago to London and the Pacific during WWII to the soundstage of the <em>Phil Donohue Show</em>-<em>American Pied Piper</em> is the final chapter in a trilogy tracing the rise and fall of the American Midwest.</p>