W.Y. Boyd Literary Award recipient named

Contact: Cheryl Malden
Program Officer
312-280-3247
For Immediate Release
June 8, 2007

W.Y. Boyd Literary Award recipient named

CHICAGO –Robert Mrazek’s novel “The Deadly Embrace” is the winner of the W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction for 2007.

The W.Y. Boyd Literary Novel Award honors the best fiction set in a period when the United States was at war. The $5,000 award and citation, donated by author W.Y. Boyd, recognizes the service of American veterans and encourages the writing and publishing of outstanding war-related fiction.

“Robert Mrazek has written an excellent work on a critical period in the Second World War,” said jury chair Robert Schnare. “It is a very compelling tale that enables the reader to obtain a perspective of what it was really like in war-weary England in the days before the Allied invasion of France on June 6, 1944.”

The intrigue, the tension, and the secrecy surrounding those critical days before the invasion are chronicled through the eyes of American officers, Lieutenant Elizabeth “Liza” Marantz and Major Sam Taggaret. They must uncover who is killing women who may know the date of the invasion. We follow these two individuals as they battle the British and American chains of command in their effort to uncover the identity of the individual to compromise the invasion.

The author uses his narrative to keep the reader in suspense as Lieutenant Marantz and Major Taggaret race frantically to discover who is behind this conspiracy. This, according to Schnare, helped depict the stakes that were at risk in keeping the vital secret of the invasion from the Germans in order to save thousands of Allied lives and not alter the course of the war.

Members of the 2007 W.Y. Boyd Literary Novel Award Jury are: Chair, Robert Schnare, Naval War College, Newport, R.I.; Lawrence Clemens, United States Naval Academy, Nimitz Library, Annapolis, Md.; Nancy Davenport, Consultant, Washington, DC; Maxine Reneker, Naval Postgraduate School, Dudley Knox Library, Monterey, Calif.; James Schenkel, Library of Congress, Washington, DC; and Ronald Steensland, Panama City, Fla.

The W.Y. Boyd Literary Award will be presented on Tuesday, June 26, 2007 during the American Library Association Annual Conference in Washington, DC.

The deadline for submission of applications for the 2008 W.Y. Boyd Literary Award is December 1, 2007. Guidelines and application forms are available at:

http://www.ala.org/ala/awardsbucket/wyboydaward/wyboydaward.htm.