Author Waits Fifty-Five Years Between Novels and Picks up Kudos and 5 Awards

LOS ANGELES - Dec. 4, 2017 - PRLog -- After a decades-long detour into writing for television, Retired Marine Colonel Ernest Frankel finally returned to the publishing world with an epic historical novel, Gateway to Everywhere (Hither Lane Press), a 660-page "page-turner" set in early 1900s Palm Springs. To date the book has been named a Finalist in the Eric Hoffer Awards, the Benjamin Franklin Awards, the Beverly Hills Book Awards, the Book Excellence Awards, and the Global Ebook Awards. His two previous novels are Band of Brothers (Macmillan, 1959), about the Marines in Korea, and Tongue of Fire (Dial Press, 1960), about the Senator Joseph McCarthy era of the 1950s. Frankel has since re-published Tongue of Fire and added a subtitle: The Story of an American Demagogue to highlight the book's political theme. His work is included in Van Wyck Mason's Anthology of American War Literature.

Gateway to Everywhere begins in China in 1900 on the eve of the Boxer Rebellion, then takes the reader on a heart-pounding escape from Peking and across the pirate-infested high seas to Palm Springs, California, an area still reeling from an ongoing drought. At the heart of this dazzling story is a marriage―two Americans who met and wed in Peking—the beautiful, charming Shannon, a mere 17, and her unwavering Marine husband, Clay, 24, who together try to make a life for themselves in the parched and inhospitable environment of Palm Springs. Thoroughly researched, Frankel has been to the locations in China where the book opens, and spent considerable time in Palm Springs, researching the early families, the Jewish Community, the Indians, date growing, the devastating drought, Pancho Villa and the Mexican American War, and early flight (it was the first time planes were used in war). The book is available on Amazon and Kindle.

Ernest Frankel is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He enlisted in the Marine Corps as a Private and served on active duty as a Platoon Commander of the First Marine Division in Okinawa during World War II, the last and bloodiest battle of the War in the Pacific. After the War, he was ordered to North China and stationed in Tentsin, with his duties taking him to Peking and Taku—three of the locales revisited in Gateway to Everywhere. He was recalled to active duty during the Korean War and again during the war in Vietnam on special assignment. He was awarded the Legion of Merit by President Gerald Ford.

Gateway to Everywhere by Ernest Frankel. ISBN: 9780692755266; Hither Lane Press, Available: Amazon.com and Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Gateway-Everywhere-Ernest-Frankel-...

Ernest Frankel can be reached through his daughter, Elin Schwartz, at elinschwartz1@mac.com.

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