James M. Hawk
A Navy brat, James was forced to travel at an early age. He started school barefoot on Oahu. Then there were more school years in San Francisco (Treasure Island) and Seattle. In 1976, Captain Hawk received his orders to go to Naples, Italy. James graduated from high school in Bella Napoli in 1979. Then, a few months later, after dropping in on The San Fermin Festival in Pamplona, Spain, and sleeping on a lot of moving trains in Europe, he began his college studies in Munich, Germany.
A graduate of the University of Washington and University of Puget Sound School of Law, James lives in Washington State as a beneficiary of the bluest skies you've surely ever seen. He knows a lot of lyrics from 1970s songs.
When his dad died in 2018, James found in his dad's closet the World War I era letters written between his grandparents. The letters were safe and dry, in bundles, in shoe boxes. James decided to put the letters in a book as a family legacy project. The book-writing became a little more ambitious and a little more serious when he decided more people needed to read these historic letters. (Roy Hawk met Mabel Ruth Thornton, a Daughter of the American Revolution, in January 1917. Living in different towns in Eastern Tennessee, Roy and Mabel became committed pen pals before sparks started flying, so to speak. The United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, and their love letters soon enough became "history letters." "My Dear Mabel" is their story, told through their letters--from February 1917 through the end of June 1919. Roy (25) went to France with the 6th Infantry Division in July 1918; two months later, Mabel (23) went to Washington, D.C. to serve as a "war worker" in the War Department. Through their letters, they would plan for a future, which would include a marriage and a home that was to be "the dearest place on earth.")
In eleven chapters, James introduces the reader to the letters he delighted in reading. The reader is invited to be the "fourth person in history" to read these beautiful letters. There is an "Epilogue" in "My Dear Mabel." Suffice it to say here, when Roy returned home from Europe in June 1919, they were in love...and the rest is history.
In 2022, James made sure that all of the original letters contained in "My Dear Mabel" were safely received at The Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection. The letters are now cared for in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee. When they were young, on their way to one of the theaters on Gay Street, Mabel and Roy strolled past the building that now houses their century-old letters.
James wrote "Advice To Sons" over some months in 2022. The book is small enough that a reader could put it in a jacket pocket. The book is short enough that a reader could finish it on a short flight. Twice. As the Preface states, "This book is written for my sons." James wanted to give his boys some understanding of the importance of the lives and of the writings of their grandfather (the Navy Officer and world traveler) and their great-grandfather (the WWI doughboy and small town merchant). It is their "Advice" that is found in the fifteen pithy chapters of "Advice To Sons." James wrote the following into the book's Preface: "Both men worked hard, valued relationships and the blessings of liberty secured for them [and] both men pursued happiness, and gratefully lived the American Dream."
James published his first novel in 2024: "The Pedestrian Ethic." James arrived at the novel's title in the early 1980s, following repeated trips to Herfy's, a burger restaurant in Seattle's University District. The protagonist, his name is Wendell. You are invited to follow Wendell through the streets of Seattle, and to Laguna Beach and to Southern Italy.
Fabio said it when he dropped his client (Wendell) off at his hotel in Roma Centrale: "Whoever does not marry an Italian, dies a foreigner." By the time Fabio dropped off his client in Positano, they were suitemates--and Wendell was beginning to understand what Fabio meant.
