H.W. “Buzz” Bernard has written several best-selling and award-winning historical fiction novels. With his newest one, DOWN A DARK ROAD, Bernard honors Oregon WWII hero Jim Thayer, father to Kiss guitarist Tommy Thayer.
In 1945, Thayer led a platoon that discovered and liberated the Gunskirchen Lager concentration camp, saving approximately 15,000 people.
“I had the privilege and honor of knowing General Thayer. Sitting in the presence of such a great man reminded me that were it not for him and other men and women of the Greatest Generation, my mother and many others like her would have perished during World War II in Nazi Germany’s barbaric concentration camps.[…] Read this book. Share it with your friends and neighbors. Discuss it. Never forget!”
—Gene Simmons, cofounder of rock group Kiss
In DOWN A DARK ROAD, Bernard writes a fictionalized account of this heroic event. The novel transports readers to the shadowy forests of WWII Austria, where a weary and battle-worn Army platoon is about to discover the war’s darkest secret, and Thayer dispatches an unofficial team of unlikely allies—an American bomber pilot, a German Luftwaffe fighter pilot, and a young Austrian woman—in order to hunt down the architect of the Nazi atrocity they face.
“Down a Dark Road tells the story of an ordinary young Oregonian who met extraordinary challenges in World War II, and found the courage and wisdom to meet those challenges. It also reveals the kindness and gentleness—the humanity—of a life-long warrior.”
—Ted Kulongoski, Governor of Oregon (2003-2011)
A native Oregonian himself, Bernard now lives in Kennewick, Washington. His debut novel Eyewall, became a number-one Kindle bestseller, and three of his subsequent thriller/suspense novels won EPIC eBook Awards. Of his WWII historical fiction, two of his titles have won the Military Writers Society of America Gold Medal award.
The book launch and signing for DOWN A DARK ROAD will be held Saturday, May 13 from 2–4pm at Bernard’s writing studio in Kennewick. He will also be doing a reading at Portland’s Annie Bloom’s Books on Tuesday, May 23 at 7pm. For more information on Bernard and his novel or to coordinate an interview, please contact his publicity team at Mindbuck Media Book Publicity, jess@mindbuckmedia.com.
