“Our 2nd First Date”

Chicoan Pamela Dean, “raised in Redding and later escaping to Chico for college … writes the kind of love stories she grew up on: a little messy, a little nostalgic, and a lot more fun without Wi-Fi.” 

It’s the mid-90’s in the little (fictional) town of Bower, which is near the (real) town of Gridley. A thriving farming community back in 1985, something had happened. “Farms that once thrived have folded. Processing plants are shuttered.” Unbeknownst to our 28-year-old hero, Sam Ford, his family had a big part to play.

Wounded in “Desert Shield, first wave,” Sam’s tank unit hit an IED. Though there are burns, it’s his mind that needs healing. So he returns to his hometown of Bower, taking a job as a bus driver for a group of special ed kids.

There he encounters Tammy Little, his “first crush” in high school ten years earlier. Tammy had returned to Bower as well when her father died. She’s now an aide at the special ed school.

That crush rekindles in “Our 2nd First Date” ($14.99 in paperback from Boyer Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle), a “messy,” sexy-sweet romance sprinkled with (mostly) good-natured f-bombs (101 by my count). Sam and Tammy narrate alternating chapters, and what brings them together is love of an almost nonverbal autistic child, Donny, age 7, whose home life is hardly a life at all.

Tammy wants to stay in Bower and take care of him. Sam—well, he wants to take care of Tammy. “After last night,” he says in one of his chapters, “my hands and lips all over her, the way she touched me, kissed me. There is no denying now; I am an inferno.” He wants a special “second date”: “I figured we could go into Chico,” Sam tells her, “get burgers at The Bear, or if you want fancy, we could go to Basque Norte, or R Fish and Company.”

But then Sam learns his family’s secrets; his life begins to unravel once again. And Tammy believes that high school date was only because of a dare. The two are headed in opposite directions. 

But, dear reader, you know there’s more to come.

“Jeddy’s Teddy: The True Story Of A Boy And His Teddy Bear”

“Growing up,” we’re told, Jed Bernard’s “best friend was Tommy Teddy Bear, a constant source of comfort and support.” Now, the Chico Stare Business Admin grad is sharing the simple story with other kids who may find that things are not going as planned.

He’s come a long way from his birthplace in Yuba City. His Internet Movie Database bio says Jed “is an American actor known for portraying tough, driven characters with a grounded physical presence and emotional intensity. Based in Los Angeles, Bernard has built a career playing law enforcement officers, soldiers, and conflicted authority figures across film and television.”

He speaks four languages and “appeared in the Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning drama Clemency opposite Academy Award nominee Alfre Woodard, as well as Aldis Hodge, Richard Schiff, and Michael O'Neil, portraying a Death Watch Officer in the powerful prison drama.”

Early on Jed learned that “when plans fall apart, love, friendship, and the joy of a special companion can make everything right again.” And that’s the message of “Jeddy’s Teddy: The True Story Of A Boy And His Teddy Bear” ($14.77 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle).

With sunny and colorful illustrations by Carlos Escudero, the read-aloud story is easy to follow. “Jeddy was so excited. In just a few days, he would turn four years old! His Momma Sue and Daddy Darryl had planned an amazing birthday party for him at the park. All of Jeddy’s friends from school would be there with presents.”

But then, “two days before his big party, Jeddy woke up feeling strange. His forehead felt hot, and he was sweating through his pajamas. He felt miserable.” Uh, oh. Jeddy would have to stay home until he felt better. The big party was off. “Jeddy burst into tears.”

“Momma hugged Jeddy close. ‘I know you’re sad, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Sometimes life doesn’t go the way we plan, and we have to work around it. But I promise we’ll make your birthday special, even if it’s different from what we planned.’” 

That’s a cue for Tommy Teddy Bear to enter the scene, and for hugs all around.

“Flip the Script: A Teen Novel About How Today’s Choices Unlock the Power of a Skilled Career”

Norm Nielsen, the former CEO of Chico Electric, has teamed with retired journalism and communications instructor Mark Powers to tell the story of three ninth-graders on the way to making life-changing career decisions.

Nielsen and Powers have established a nonprofit, Industry for Education (industryforeducation.org), which establishes partnerships with local high schools. The goal is to bust the stereotype that the trades are for those who can’t measure up to college work.

“Flip the Script: A Teen Novel About How Today’s Choices Unlock the Power of a Skilled Career” ($12.99 in paperback from deTello Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle) shows what happens when the trio find themselves in a course called CTE (Career & Technical Education) Foundations. 

Kai Cruz just sort of reacts “as life comes.” His best friend, Zoe Martin, is highly disciplined with a top college in view. Her rival, Ethan Cole, has an air of condescension about the whole trades thing. Their teacher, Ms. Maddox, wants them to think about “flipping the script.” Instead of just living day to day, hoping something will work out, “what if you start by asking: What kind of life do I want?” 

As you develop an answer, “you can work backward to make choices now that get you there. That’s what I mean by flipping it. Instead of just reacting to life as it comes, you start designing with intention.” The choice isn’t either/or: “college and the trades are tools, not labels.”

The book focuses on a field trip to “Everline Electric.” Electrical provides entry-level, technical, and professional careers. These are whole-person careers—you have to know reading, writing and math—and there’s no college debt. (Each chapter includes thoughtful questions and helpful resources.) The story takes the trio step by step into appreciating (or, in Ethan’s case, at least acknowledging) that the trades are a viable choice for those who want to put in the work. 

In the end, as Zoe says in her presentation, don’t “confuse prestige with purpose…. Purpose is knowing why you get up every morning, knowing your work matters, knowing you’re building a life that fits you.”

“MAGA vs. The Bible: The Unbelievable Contradictions”

In the summer of 2025 a little book of quotations appeared that sparked a two book response by a Chico publisher. With a provocative title, “Jesus And Trump: The Parallel Sayings” aimed to show (as the Amazon page notes) that “Donald Trump and Jesus Christ have brought similar teachings to their contemporaries.”

Among the examples given: “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes” (Mark 9:23) and “I like thinking big. If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big” (Donald Trump, Facebook, November 21, 2016).

Presuming the book’s message is intended “unironically,” the two co-publishers of Chico’s Quoir Publishing (quoir.com), Keith Giles and Matthew Distefano, have fired back with quotation books of their own. The first, “Trump vs. Jesus: The Unparallel Sayings” (published December 2025), asks the question: “What if we placed the words of Donald Trump and the words of Jesus side-by-side and simply paid attention?”

The second book, just published, is “MAGA vs. The Bible: The Unbelievable Contradictions” ($10.99 in paperback from Quoir Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle), which puts quotes from MAGA adherents alongside passages from the Bible. For example, “Saying no to President Trump is saying no to God” (Trump spiritual advisor Paula White-Cain in 2025); “To you it was shown so that you would acknowledge that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him” (Deuteronomy 4:35).

Trump’s Truth Social post from April 2026, in which he used an expletive to warn Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz (or else), is contrasted with one of of the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9).

For Distefano, the real mission of Jesus (as told in the Gospels) centers on “revolutionary love”; “championing the least of these”; being a “servant-leader”; and “anti-wealth” (the wealthy must not oppress the poor). 

“To my mind,” he writes, “Jesus Christ and Donald J. Trump could not be further from each other in philosophy, ethics, morals, or basic human decency…. If we care about resisting the antichrist distortions infecting our national life, then we cannot ignore what is being spread in Christianity’s name.”

“Cruisin’ The ‘Nade: Coming Of Age In The 1960s In Northern California”

For longtime Chicoan Michael Halldorson, “my ‘coming of age’ began in September 1959 when I, and other Chico Junior High School graduates, moved on to Chico High School to begin our sophomore year. It ended in June 1969 upon my graduation from Chico State College.”

In between, “a three-year hitch in the Navy in the mid-1960s, serving aboard a destroyer off the coast of the Republic of Vietnam, marked an interlude in my studies at Chico State.” He adds, in a winsome memoir, that “one of my first priorities upon returning to college was to learn how to do all the new dances with all the bitchin’ moves that had come out while I was overseas. This would also be, I believed, a good way to get a girl.”

Though he played sports at Chico High, he mostly focused on “cars and girls”; his co-author, prolific Chico writer David Bruhn, supplies background material on some of the great athletes who emerged (like MLB pitcher Nelson Briles) and offers historical insight. Together they make “Cruisin’ The ‘Nade: Coming Of Age In The 1960s In Northern California” ($23 in paperback from Heritage Books) a must-read for those who want to know what makes Chico Chico.

Chapters cover the explosion in 1962 which “destroyed a Titan 1 missile and caused extensive damage to its silo … north of the Chico Municipal Airport.” 

There were the hot rod races by high school kids on the Esplanade. Halldorson and others “tooled around,” “honking at girls and honking at friends. Once downtown, the typical route was to start by the college and cruise out to the A&W Drive-in and back.” His first car “was a 4-door 1953 Chevy.” His second: “a 1950 Olds painted metallic blue. I got in in 1963….” 

The book covers the Chico draft protests in 1968, concerts at Chico State (Lou Rawls, The Grateful Dead, Johnny Cash), and more.

Halldorson studied art at Chico State under world-renowned printmaker Janet Turner; spent time in the Netherlands with M.C. Escher; and was named a Chico State University distinguished alum in 2019. 

Took some time, but he “came of age.”

“Unmasked: A 90 Day Journey For The Traumatized Heart”

Chico Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Natalie Stromberg (natalierstromberg.com), with a Master’s degree in Psychology from Chico State, knows the reality of trauma. During a missions trip to Thailand for her church, she spoke with human trafficking survivors. “I encountered a familiar brokenness in their stories,” she writes, “one that mirrored my own wounds from years of silenced trauma, cycles of revictimization, and a childhood marked by sexual abuse.”

In “Unmasked: A 90 Day Journey For The Traumatized Heart” ($15.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle), Stromberg has written a deeply insightful Christian devotional filled with compassion, gentleness, and love. Each short entry offers a reflection on a key Bible verse and a prayer for the day. Slowly, slowly, day by day, the reader is asked to “look beneath the masks that once kept you alive.”

She writes “to the wounded inner child who walked these ninety days with trembling hands and guarded hope—you did not walk alone.”

“Trauma,” Stromberg writes, “often convinces us that we are invisible, unheard, or unworthy of care. Yet God turns that lie on its head. He does not dismiss your wounds or rush you past your grief. He bends low, draws near, and honors the depth of your sorrow. His presence does not erase your past, but it redeems it, weaving even your most hidden anguish into His story of love and healing.”

Trauma, Stromberg says, lives in one’s mind, body, and spirit. In a personal reflection, she notes that “Therapy became a sacred place for me to gently challenge” the lies trauma tells. “The body remembers what the mind tries to forget. I discovered that healing required movement, breath, gentleness….” And her spirit—“the deepest place—needed permission to trust again. Scripture, prayer, and honest conversations with God reminded me that I was never abandoned, even when it felt that way. God met me not in perfection, but in presence.”

The book focuses on that deepest place. “The chains of trauma, shame, and fear do not have the final say—Jesus has set you free, and now,” she writes, “you walk in the unstoppable power of that freedom.” 

“Lilith And The Holey Man”

Sam Smith, computer programmer, finds himself at Museo del Prado in Madrid viewing Hieronymus Bosch’s extraordinary triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights—“full of naked figures, fantastic creatures, and giant strawberries and birds which were symbols of sexuality, and imagery that has entertained and confounded viewers across five centuries.”

He notices a young woman on a nearby bench. “It was hard to ignore what was obviously very long red hair stacked atop her head like a malformed mound of cotton candy held together with a trio of chopsticks.” And, Sam adds, “I have an attraction—my friends say fatal—to red haired women.”

So begins the propulsive story of “Lilith And The Holey Man” ($13.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) by Chico writer/photographer Doug Keister, his forty-ninth book. It is love at first sight; a kind of lightning bolt hits them both, and soon the mysterious woman, whose name may be Lilith, is in Sam’s hotel room, lying atop him, as both experience transcendent sex.

Earlier, looking at the section of the Bosch painting depicting Hell, Lilith tells Sam, “I think human beings are full of holes. All of us…. I think a lot of people are afraid of loving someone then being rejected, so they fill their love hole with things like money and power and control…. And random sex.”

The two are drawn to the legend of Lilith from a medieval Jewish text called the Alphabet of Ben-Sira, where God creates Adam’s first wife, Lilith, not from his rib but from the dust of the earth, like Adam. The two are equal, but soon quarrel, and Lilith disappears. Legend makes her the “other,” Eve the subservient one.

Lilith leaves Sam’s room to attend to an errand, but never returns. What follows are alternating chapters as both Sam and Lilith attempt to find each other with little to go on. Years pass, but Keister has a lightning bolt or two left to throw. 

Afterward, the author chats with the reader, showing how Bosch’s painting may point to Lilith; opening up the legend all the way to Cheers; and how the holey in all of us might be filled.