How cool was tonight's Friends of the Library Presentation? (answer: very!)
M.C. spent the evening sharing his debut novel, The Elixir of Yosemite, in which he takes readers up and down the vertical world of Yosemite National Park. The premise is a unique one... a misfit Park Ranger and a South Lake Tahoe teenager try to stop a mercenary from unleashing havoc on America's first protected land. Mr. Behm is a former deep-rural and inner-city schoolteacher, who writes the "Tahoe Dad" column for the Reno Gazette Journal and Tahoe Mountain News. He stated, "he rock climbs with a zeal bordering on fanatical".
The pen-name M.C. Behm is an homage to the author's late grandmother, Marian Coggen Behm, with whom he lived during his first years teaching high school. Despite being diagnosed with Polio at age 3, and being told that she would never marry, never have children, and never amount to much, she defied all of those expectations by getting a Doctorate from Columbia University, marrying an Olympic athlete, becoming the first school psychologist in the state of Delaware, having 4 children and living to the ripe old age of 89. She always wanted to add "novelist" to her list of accolades, so perhaps having her grandson do it for her is the next best thing.
M.C.'s presentation was unique, intriguing and even made me want to climb the mountains of Yosemite... a little bit. The novel is going to be a page-turner. I can't wait to read it. I love the diversity of programming at our South Lake Tahoe Library.
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