TRACON by Paul McElroy receives two national awards at BookExpo America

Novel also named a Benjamin Franklin Award finalist

“Frequent fliers will find this book engrossing
and the very realism of the plot will keep
most readers turning the pages.”

— Benjamin Franklin Award judge

Newcastle, Wash. (June 2001) — Japphire is proud to announce that TRACON by Paul McElroy won the 2001 Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) for mystery/suspense/thriller and the bronze 2001 Book of the Year Award in the fiction/mystery category.

The IPPY award is sponsored by Independent Publisher Online to recognize excellence in independent publishing. This year, more than 770 publishers submitted entries.

The Book of the Year Award is sponsored by ForeWord Magazine to bring increased attention from librarians and booksellers to the literary achievements of independent publishers and their authors. A librarian and bookseller selected winners and finalists in 38 categories from a pool of more than 800 entries based on editorial excellence and professional production as well as the originality of the narrative and the value the book adds to its genre. Winning titles will be featured in a poster distributed to booksellers and librarians across the U.S. through ForeWord Magazine and industry trade shows.

TRACON was also named one of two finalists for the 2001 Benjamin Franklin Award in the category of mystery/suspense. The Benjamin Franklin Award is sponsored by the Publishers Marketing Association, and celebrates excellence in editorial and design for titles published in 2000. This year, PMA received more than 1,600 entries. Open to all publishers, the awards are judged by professionals from all areas of the industry: major newspaper and trade media reviewers, bookstore and library buyers and reviewers, non-competing publishers, artists and writers who serve the industry.

TRACON (pronounced tray-kon, an acronym for Terminal Radar Approach Control) is a novel about the life of an air traffic controller and a fictional exposé about an airline disaster waiting to happen. Japphire is publishing a commemorative hardcover edition of TRACON in August to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the air traffic controllers’ strike.

In the foreword of the hardcover, John S. Carr, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, distinguishes TRACON:

“The air traffic control world is off-limits to most of you and, consequently, often misunderstood. TRACON accomplishes what many media accounts, newspaper articles, magazine treatments and movies have tried and failed to do: get into the minds of the men and women who are responsible for more lives in an hour than most surgeons are in a lifetime. TRACON is a fictionalized account so accurate and chilling in its realism that it strikes people in aviation as a narrative summary of actual events.”

The intrigue in TRACON begins when peculiar readouts flash across air traffic controller Ryan Kelly’s scope. Two jets tangle over Lake Michigan and several hundred people die, propelling Kelly into the political and public crosshairs. Evidence vanishes. Hidden forces sabotage his reputation. His tightly coiled world spins out of control. There’s only one way to clear his name and expose the renegade computer ... but at great peril to the one he loves.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul McElroy is a former award-winning journalist whose beat as a reporter included aviation. In 1979, he covered the crash of American Airlines flight 191 outside Chicago and conducted a heart-rending interview with the co-pilot’s wife. TRACON, McElroy's debut novel, so authentically portrays the profession of air traffic control that the National Air Traffic Controllers Association recently commissioned him to write a nonfiction book about the union’s history.

McElroy’s 21-year career in journalism included positions at the Chicago Sun-Times, suburban Chicago Daily Herald, Woodstock (Ill.) Daily Sentinel and a weekly newspaper. He wrote TRACON while working full-time as an editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. McElroy is now a full-time author and teaching associate at the University of Washington School of Communications.

TRACON is available at many fine independent bookstores, Borders Books, Amazon.com, and BarnesandNoble.com.

For details on scheduled author events, click here. We have created a Web page link where you may download photos of the book and author in JPEG format. To request printed photos, review copies of TRACON, schedule an author interview, or for additional information, please e-mail Amy Falen or call 425-430-0007.

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