Luigi Falconi

Luigi Falconi was born in Tricarico, Italy, in 1945. Soon after his birth his parents immigrated to the United States.

Although an honor student with a football scholarship to Notre Dame, he left school to study Kabbalah and became an apprentice to a shoemaker on Mackinac Island, Michigan.

A skilled artisan, Luigi designed and crafted Chippewa moccasins while attending Michigan State University, where he earned a BA in 1967 and an MA in 1969. While shoemaking he took full-time university classes toward his Ph.D.

In 1974, Luigi uprooted his family to become headmaster of a small oil company school in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. He left education in 1978 and went to work in the Middle East oilfields. After thirty-four years in the hot desert sun of Arabia, Luigi, unable to distinguish fact from fiction in his own life, left Dubai and moved to Italy to learn Italian and rediscover the truth.

The Duke of Dubai is his first published novel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKk3-NtM6-A