Meet bestselling author Dwight Fryer
posted by Ella Curry

Fryer shares from his twenty-five years of business experience in leadership, technology, finance, accounting, marketing and publishing. He has written two critically acclaimed novels. The Legend of Quito Road and The Knees of Gullah Island. Dwight speaks about life, healthcare, business, leadership, history, literature, community and storytelling. The University of Memphis teaches The Legend of Quito Road in its Masters of Fine Arts Program in the English Department.

Dwight Fryer has inspired audiences at universities, corporations, schools, faith communities and nonprofit organizations. His passion is to help people do all they can to succeed and use his experiences to inspire others.

Fryer was diagnosed with cancer two days after a 1998 layoff. In 2001, the disease meningococcal meningitis took his youngest daughter’s life. He works as an advocate for immunization against bacterial meningitis with the National Meningitis Association. He survived a wreck caused by a driver under the influence.

Contact him today for details on how he can share at your next event via email at author@dwightfryer.com.   Website: http://www.dwightfryer.com

Q. What impact will your books have on the community?
People need to experience literature that is not just low brow and dangerous personal behavior. We need books that help us grow and reflect. Too much of our media related content is pure sex and not much else. I want the modern reader to pick up a book, be drawn into the story, relate to the characters as real persons, and find they can truly enjoy the book without numerous sexual scenes in each chapter. Our families are bombarded with sexual content and I wanted to develop and share interesting and enlightening books that readers love without the damaging backdrop of activities labeled as pornography when I was younger.

Today, we must decide — persons of color and not of color — how we're going to work together, sowing is what I am writing about. We have to truly realize the dream that Dr. King had for us. So as I tell these historical stories and we look at how often people focus on their differences and not their similarities and how they can work against each other instead of together. Too many of our areas are still very divided communities, too often on race, religion, or political alliance separates us. Unfortunately too many people that are in powerful positions are not trying to find ways to build bridges to each other and work as a coalition builder and a success builder. We live in a very divided world where it's not so much about color.  Quite often it's about ethnicity and who and what we believe in.  Instead of mankind finding a way to work together, we too often are prone to work apart.

My stories share the lives of characters that grow past many of these challenges in order to achieve their personal goals.

Q: What inspired you to write these stories?
My first novel was inspired by a economics paper I wrote in graduate school about a drug dealer, his massive initial economic success, and the life prison terms he eventually received for his risk taking schemes in the drug trade. When I began to research this story for the novel form, I felt a need to go to the root of the problem, illegal whiskey.

The Legend of Quito Road called to me early in the mornings of most days until I finally obeyed and wrote the book. The Knees of Gullah Island shares the family history and readers learn what happened to Gillam Hale. He was Son Erby’s grandpa by his second family after his first was taken and sold away.

I wish the modern reader knew more about their origins. This would help us unlock some of the mystery of who we are and who our children can become.

Q: Tell us a little about your main characters. Who are your favorites? Why?
In The Legend of Quito Road, Papa Gill Erby is a good man with thick thumb and jet black skin. He and his second wife, Miss Sarah, have twelve children between them. Miss Sarah has yellow skin, green eyes and hair well below her shoulders. Only one of their offspring is a boy, Raymond Simon Erby. However, that male child is not called by his given name. He is what he is, Son Erby, the only surviving male heir. In December 1932, thirteen-years-old Son receives the family legacy from soft spoken and kind Papa Gill. This gift had been handed down by his father, Gillam Hale. Papa Gill taught his only boy to make illegal moonshine whiskey and Son Erby was never the same. He grows toward manhood with a wicked spark added to his light brown eyes during the three years course of the novel.

Is there any spiritual difference in making moonshine and crack cocaine or crystal meth? Was this knowledge a gift or a curse and what is does that information produce today for modern drug industry participants?

Red-headed Rafe Coleman and mocha skinned Thelma Louise Smith enter a relationship of mutual exploitation. Who is really in charge of this love-match between the large town constable that readers love to hate and a woman with a sordid family given nickname because of her physical traits. They call her Bustie and all know why!

In The Knees of Gullah Island, Queen Esther Hale has been enslaved twice. She is still not free when the book begins in July 1883, even though she is an intelligent and successful business woman with a flourishing restaurant in downtown Charleston. Her husband Gillam Hale, has not seen her in twenty-five years since their illegal sale into slavery. He must make a huge decision when he discovers she is in Charleston: does he leave all he has known in the second half of his life to search for what he loved in his first half of his existence?

How does this type history impact the modern man’s exit from the home and children they have parented? How did slavery impact the slaveholder? For that story, we look at the lives of Claude and Marjorie Crenshaw, rich Southerners with a storied past and many secrets.

Miss Grozalia is a Gullah-Geechee matriarch and root doctor. You better treat her with respect or she will put a root on you! Miss Grozalia told a young gal, “Daa’tuh, mos’ time two lay down three get up!” How many young folks today need to receive that message.

Dora and March Crenshaw are young, barely black and have big decisions to make in their young adult lives. Which side of the color line of their mixed heritage will they be drawn too and why does society make them choose one when they originate from both?

Mule Jenkins is an African American vendor who sells fish to the exclusive homes South of Broad on the Charleston peninsula. Homeless Mule sings as he walks to market his wares and forget his troubles. Cuppie Geechee is a voluptuous Gullah woman who has waited for thirteen years for the love of a man from her past. On a cool afternoon near Christmas 1883, she decided not to wait any more.

Gullah John is as mean as he is lanky. His Gullah speech and wicked sense of humor makes the hair stand up on the back of the neck of most folks he meets. Why does he have such a hold on June, daughter of Queen Esther and Gillam Hale? June is thick with muddy red skin and has a weakness that only the love of a father can heal. How many children today suffer similar challenges?

Bent knees do straighten crooked deeds. All the characters eventually learn this and someday so will each of us.

Q: Thousands of books are published each year. What sets your books apart from other books in your genre?
I am producing quality stories suitable for young and old to read. These books have great wisdom lessons and are filled with startling story lines and unforgettable characters. A major university has taught my work in their Masters of Fine Arts program in the English Department. That is rare air for any writer in any genre.

Contact author Dwight Fryer today for details on how he can share at your next event via email at author@dwightfryer.com. Website: http://www.dwightfryer.com

The Legend of Quito Road by Dwight Fryer
ISBN-13: 9781583147061  |  ISBN: 1583147063
Pick up a copy at Barnes and Noble 


The Knees of Gullah Island by Dwight Fryer
ISBN: 0373831196  |  ISBN-13: 9780373831197
Pick up a copy at Barnes and Noble 

Both books are filled with rich historical details and spiritual truths that are applicable to the modern reader.