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Every weekday, just before dawn, a commuter train full of business people pulls out of the train station in Santa Ana, California and rumbles toward downtown Los Angeles. Typically the "e;quiet"e; car of this train is packed full of suited men and women who are busy preparing for their workdays. Some are sitting quietly, hunched over cof-fee cups. Others are poking at their phones, reviewing documents, or catching a final few moments of sleep. Then there's Peter Nielsen, a banker with an office on the 26th floor of a very tall building, near LA's Union Sta-tion. He spends nearly all of his morning commute writing non-fiction true stories with a wide-ranging team of themes and characters. One describes a young boy from the California suburbs who visits his challenging grand-father's ranch in Utah and ends up running from an angry bull. Another, set in the jungles of Guatemala, tells the tale of a Missionary who is asked to raise an infant from the dead. Still another describes the actions of a federal agent who brings pizzas to the managers of insolvent banks he has just closed. In turn, these stories are happy, sad, tense, surprising, anguished and occasionally angry. They take place all over the United States and in Central America. Some describe events that took place in the early 1960s, while others occurred more recently. These stories have important things in common. Each them is full of love, curiosity, generosity and faith. None of them attempts to force conclusions on the reader. Oh, and there's one other thing: the central character in all of them is Peter Nielsen. Born in 1958 in San Francis-co, California, he was raised in Northern California communities like Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Sunnyvale. When he was still young, his family moved to the suburbs of Washington DC and then to Ventura and San Diego counties. He has a B.A. from Brigham Young University and an M.B.A. from the Claremont Graduate Universi-ty.All that I Have Seen is an unusual autobiography in the sense that it does not hew strictly to a chronological byline. Instead, like life itself, it is more complicated and more rewarding than that. Reading this book is more akin to eat-ing a long happy dinner with a grand collection of one's former selves. Everybody talks, laughs, eats and listens, all in no particular order, and when it's all over one feels not only happily full but grateful to have had a seat at the table.All That I Have Seen, essentially, describes the making of a good, wise man. As it progresses, the many life sto-ries it contains converge and merge into the mind and body of the friendly looking banker who is always busy writing in the quiet car of the early morning Metrolink train out of Santa Ana.

With his wife's memory lost due to a traumatic brain injury, Daniel Kilgore volunteered at Magnolia Garden, an assisted living facility, hoping he could learn how to resurrect his wife's fading memories. He was drawn to three residents, Delores Samuels, Mary Hillman, and Sandra Cotton. Why were they placed there, only to be forgotten? Daniel knew they had lives that deserved to be remembered. Mary's husband, George, Sandra's son, Jim, and Delores's son Fred would endure their own emotional epiphany causing them to go to the Gardens for atonement. Would it be in time? His wife's caretaker, Dr. Jane Lincoln, would expose Kilgore's own emotional confliction between his past and their future. He would struggle with the memories of his past and the chance to make new memories.With unconscionable greed, George Hillman destroyed his wife's dream of being a mother. As her health and mind faded, and faced with round the clock home care, George placed Mary in Magnolia Gardens. He took solace in the arms of Gilda Ellis, a decision that would have dire consequences. Sandra Cotton was more of a mother than a grandmother to her son, Jim's two children, Samantha and William. She soothed their scrapes and bruises, eased the pains of puppy love, and nurtured their dreams. An unwed mother at eighteen was more than Jim's wife, Carrie would take. Samantha was sent to live with her sister in North Carolina and put the baby up for adoption. The sound of Samanthas voice, hearing her laughter was the very air her grandmother lived for, without it Sandra wallowed in depression, and eventually lost any sense of reality. Through a friend, Jim and Carrie placed Jim's mother in Magnolia Gardens.Delores Samuels struggled to live on her own. Her son, Fred, traveled extensively due to work and had little time to look in on her. Fred's wife, Shelia, was devoted to herself and offered no relief. Delores's other son, Mitchell and his wife, Brenda, were her primary caretakers. Mitchell's untimely death in an automobile accident in which Brenda held Shelia responsible for forced Fred to focus on his mother's decline mental state. Sandra's care was more than Brenda and Fred could handle. Sandra's doctor recommended they place Sandra in Magnolia Gardens.He volunteered at Magnolia Gardens to give dignity and worth to the forgotten. Learning to draw out old memories from frail minds was Daniel Kilgore's other reason. His wife, Vivian, a paraplegic was suffering from memory loss. A visit to his mother would clear the other.When Brenda Samuels told Fred about her visit with his mother, Fred faced his failings. He didn't like what he saw. When she needed him the most, Fred had failed his mother, but no more.Fate would play a cruel hand in the three men's plan, but she would be much kinder to Daniel and Jane. She convinced him old memories and new ones were not mutually exclusive. He convinced her risk making new ones.

Letters From Hell is a book and personal study guide designed to encourage reflection on either one's personal spiritual life, or help recognize another person's life problems that could cause their spiritual demise. The book contains personal antidotes from the author's encounters with school friends, neighbors, customers, and people from all walks of life that he has known. Many have passed away many years ago due to choices they had made and the lifestyle they lived. These stories written as letters are completely true leading up to the peoples' deaths. Only their journey into the torment of Hell is fiction because we do not know if a person goes to Heaven or Hell upon their departure from this life. However, we can make an educated guess based on the lifestyle he or she lived while alive and well.As an example, one of the stories is about the author's friend Billy. They were best friends from the seventh grade through High School. Several people invited Billy to attend church and Sunday School all through those school years but were always fiercely rejected. Billy was adamant that preachers and churches were only after money "e;so they wouldn't have to get a real job and work for a living."e; Over the years, Billy got married and had a child but continually rejected spirituality for himself and strongly discouraged all things religious for his wife and family. Eventually, Billy devolved to throwing away a family bible his wife's family had kept for generations and even destroying other bibles his wife tried to replace it with. When his wife filed for divorce, she was granted 100% custody of their child, leaving Billy with no visitation rights. Having no interpersonal relationship with God and Jesus for spiritual support, he became distraught and promptly committed suicide. The author hopes that as you read these stories about real people and their lifestyles and descent into oblivion, please give some honest thought and self-reflection to see if your life or someone you may know compares to any of these people. And, if you do see a little of yourself in one of these stores by chance, what are you going to do about it? This book and study guide also contains discussion questions after each chapter and biblical references to help in self-evaluation and make the right choices in your (and possibly others') life.The author suspects that you have not heard much about Hell from most pulpits in today's churches other than perhaps an occasional reading of Luke 16:19-31; because most preachers are afraid of scaring the congregation and losing membership and revenue-or so they say. Is it better to keep silent on the subject and let people continue to feel good about themselves, or would it be better to make a few people uncomfortable and cause them to repent of their sins and go to heaven upon their passing? The author hopes this book and study guide will help answer that question.

Everyday Creatures is a collection of thirteen simply and elegantly told nature essays, set in time over the course of a naturalist's lifetime-from field-trip experiences as a freshman and sophomore in college, through the challenges of producing a dissertation in ecology, and on through the author's career at a major university. Yet these stories are not the scientific reports of a research professor, nor are they an attempt at popular science writing. These are personal essays that spring forth from observation and discovery of what nature has to show anyone who is willing to pay attention. The author begins with his early experiences in deserts and continues into forests, mountains, and the seashore.Kenagy shares with the reader his own direct observations and transparent personal responses to meeting a wide variety of animals in their natural habitats, and he uses language that is understandable to anyone. He follows his discoveries with reflections on the values of natural history and the conservation of wildlife and habitats. This all adds up to inspire a passion for the greater care for our planet Earth and its future.The stories and comfortable style of Everyday Creatures have attracted the acclaim of other writers:"e;Biologists often begin as nature-infatuated kids, turning over rocks, chasing critters through the brush. As they pursue scientific training, many quit venturing outdoors; instead of looking at animals, they hole up in labs to study molecules. Not so George James Kenagy, who has maintained his fascination with whole organisms, the communities they form, and the landscapes they inhabit. In his lively company, you can observe geckos, beavers, pandas, ants, kangaroo rats, desert iguanas, snowy egrets, deer mice, surf smelt, spiny lobsters, ground squirrels, darkling beetles, western rattlesnakes, hoary marmots, and other marvels of the living world. One of the most interesting animals you'll meet in these pages is the author himself."e;-SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS, author of Earth Works: Selected Essays."e;Everyday Creatures is a story of discovery, told with precision, intimacy, and wonder. Kenagy's prose is clean and entirely accessible, informative to the scientist and non-scientist alike, a testament to a lifetime of attentiveness to the natural world."e;-GREGORY MARTIN, author of Mountain City and Stories for Boys."e;Kenagy is a rare specimen among modern biologists: a true naturalist, with deep knowledge of an astonishing variety of plants and animals. This book takes you from China to New England, from eastern Washington State to western Sonora, Mexico, with rewarding stops in between, all steeped in the decades of field work that have allowed him to contribute so much to our knowledge of the natural world. To read this is to be taken to all these places, and to learn about such diverse things as the temperatures that make beetles happy, ground squirrels that prey on chipmunks, the surprising adaptations of kangaroo rats, and even the relationship between campus committees and Canada geese. I read it from beginning to end without putting it down, and suspect you will too."e;-DONALD K. GRAYSON, author of The Great Basin: A Natural Prehistory.

Chariots in the Sky is the story of Captain Taylor St. James, a dedicated Army helicopter pilot, who is sent to Vietnam. While performing his duties, Taylor will be challenged and tested beyond any measure he could have ever envisioned.He is assigned to the Eagles, a Huey Assault Company with the 101st Airborne Division in I Corps. Their flying exploits take them into many familiar places to include: A Shau Valley, Khe Sanh, Quang Tri Province, Hue, DMZ, North Vietnam and Laos.Along the way, Taylor participated in Lam Son 719, the last major American Offensive Operation of the war. This historical campaign lasted for sixty days and involved over 750 helicopters flying in and out of Laos, supporting the South Vietnamese incursion into Laos. Lam Son 719 was the costliest period of helicopter warfare for the Americans. More helicopters were shot down and sustained battle damage than any other period during the Vietnam War.

In "e;The Journey Home"e;-Book #2 of Michael J. Sullivan's "e;Forgotten Flowers trilogy-Madeline Orsini had retired as Executive Director of Magnolia Garden, an exclusive assisted living facility in Charleston, South Carolina. Her life's dream of a husband and children long ago crushed by a savage assault, Madeline had resigned herself to a life of solitary contemplation of what might have been. However, a seemingly inconsequential project conceived by Jane Lincoln, Madeline's replacement, to construct family trees for residents of Magnolia Gardens would uncover her painful past and reunite her with a dream.For Jane Lincoln, Magnolia Gardens and its residents would become the home and family she had never had. When she and Daniel Kilgore married, there were supposed to be no secrets between the two. For several years, no need existed for either to reveal the hidden truth. However, with Jane's emerging desire to have children and Daniel's determination to never again experience the excruciating pain of losing a child, their marriage was on the precipice of ending. The Family Day Celebration at Magnolia Gardens would result in an epiphany for Daniel Kilgore and the realization of a life's dream for his wife, Jane.Their euphoric life would last a mere three months when an unspeakably horrific accident would bring Jane home to Magnolia Gardens and, ironically, provide Madeline with the second part of her life's dream.