Welcome to a look into my first publication! Here you get a glimpse of the fruits of my labor. Check back as other book projects get set to hit the market!
An Historical Fiction Film Novel
Sterling Bridge
Chad Robert Parker
Tensions are high in small-town Tooele, Utah, during the Great Depression, but coach Sterling Harris knows football is the answer. Putting his job on the line, he makes a bold play to find victory for his team and unity for his town. Based on a true story, this inspiring book gives you a fresh perspective on the past and hope for the future.
This story was written in dedication of and in tribute to the memory of one of Tooele County’s best-known citizens, Sterling Richard Harris (1899-1992), who came to be known simply as “The Bridge Builder.”
(An excerpt taken from Elder Loren C. Dunn, of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) “I was raised in a community in the western valleys of Utah. The town, Tooele, was settled by pioneers; when precious ore deposits were discovered in the nearby mountains, people came in from southern and eastern Europe who had a different culture and different religious preferences. They came to work in the mines and at the smelter.
They settled just east of town and called their community “New Town.” From almost the beginning, there was division and suspicion and misunderstanding between the new residents, who brought with them their old-country customs, and the people of the more established community, who were mostly of pioneer stock. The two groups seldom mixed.
One year the high school hired a football coach fresh out of Utah State by the name of Sterling Harris. Coach Harris, as he came to be known, was outgoing and just a little irreverent. He went throughout the old town and the new town and made sure he got all the boys in school and then out for football. He had a nickname for everyone, and after a while it became a sort of status symbol to carry a Sterling Harris nickname.
It wasn’t long after that before he had the Gowns and the Whitehouses lined up next to the Savages and the Stepics and the Ormes and the Melinkoviches running from the same backfield. He was tough but impartial, and he had about him a presence that made people feel important and want to do their best.
The team came together, and Coach Harris even took them to more than one state championship. But what was more important, in bringing the team together, he brought the whole community together. Walls were broken down. People from diverse cultures learned they could build on mutual respect and appreciation. Sterling Harris had become a bridge.” (Ensign, April 1991, “Before I Build a Wall” by Loren C. Dunn)
Sterling Bridge excerpt 1: Peter Joseph Lacey, Jr. wakes up to the realities of having a Catholic father and Mormon mother in early Tooele, Utah (1926).
Available now!
