Paul A. Barra is a chemistry teacher and a former bartender, newspaper reporter and Naval officer. He was awarded the Bronze Star with Combat V and other decorations for his service on the rivers of the Mekong delta. He is married, has eight children, a dog, a cat, two alpacas, twenty-five chickens and a burro. He was born and raised in NYC and has resided in South Dakota, Hawaii and, for the past thirty years, South Carolina. He has won an array of awards from both the South Carolina Press Association and the Catholic Press Association) to magazines to books. Barra is the former senior staff writer for the Diocese of Charleston (1993-1997); his four science readers were published by Houghton Mifflin and his non-fiction book about the founding of a successful Catholic high school despite diocesan opposition came out from Tumblar House in 2008 ("St. Joe's Remarkable Journey"). His published novels include "The Secret of Maggie's Swamp" (juvenile, Brownridge Publishing, 2012), "A Death in the Hills" (Argus Books, 2014),) and "Astoria Nights" (Black Opal Books, late 2016). He is writing a series of historical mysteries featuring the real-life Rebel Bishop, Patrick N. Lynch, who was the Confederacy's leading secessionist clergyman. Visit him at www.paulbarra.com.