George A Hopkins
Garden City, Kansas
Bio
Born the oldest...
of three sons to a middle-class family in Russell, Kansas, George Hopkins was reared the American way by loving parents and a supportive community. He first dreamed of being an educator/coach like his dad but decided later to pursue the healthcare field instead. A member of the 1977 graduating class of Garden City, Kansas, High School, George took his interests to Garden City Community College and Oral Roberts University where he studied chemistry toward his bachelor of science degree.
George married Lori Bradfield in August of 1980 after being accepted into the University of Houston College of Optometry. Lori's full-time employment as well as George's part-time jobs supported the couple for four years until his graduation in 1984. They moved back to their hometown of Garden City where they live today and George is a practicing optometrist. They have two sons and three grandchildren.
Math and Science, always a passion of George's, fortunately came easily. Fortunate because reading was never his strong suit. In fact, throughout most of his life, George read only what was necessary. The concept of reading a novel, let alone writing one, was as foreign to him as rain in western Kansas.
It was only in his mid forties that George would pick up his first classical novel, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and discover a new exciting affection toward literature; creating a passion for words that, to this day, remains unquenched.
Historical fiction
Set in the mid 20th century in Nairobi Kenya
Copyright - 2017
The Story
The story begins...
with a proud grandfather sitting outside on a comfortable late spring evening, listening to the final draft of his 11 year old granddaughter's final literary requirement of her nearly completed school year. So impressed was this grandfather that he suggested the possibility of the two of them writing a book together. Though there was never an acknowledgement of agreement on behalf of the soon to be seventh grader, the impatient grandfather was sure that if given a good start, the granddaughter would surely participate with great vigor.
The idea was that the grandfather would write the first chapter of a novel and then pass it on to his eager granddaughter who would then continue the yet to be determined plot line for another chapter. And so it would go, back and forth, one chapter at a time, one author at a time, each new character moving the plot forward until it would somehow miraculously finalize itself. Brilliant!
After sitting on the first chapter for a period of six months, the overly zealous grandfather finally came to his senses and realized that no middle school girl in her right mind would spend a large portion of her free time writing a book that has no end with an old codger (even one that she loves) who has no boundaries. So one Saturday afternoon, the grandfather sat down and began writing the book that he had initially started. Seven months later, the novel, based loosely on the granddaughter (who had just returned from a mission trip to Nairobi, Kenya, with her other grandparents) was finished.
George is that grandfather and Grace, his precious and talented granddaughter, is the inspiration of this novel.
The Book
In one's mind,...
when remembering something, the memory becomes absolute; it can never alter its reality or create within itself something that doesn't exist. Forgetting however, is something different entirely; because when we forget, we don't know that we've forgotten something, it's as if it never happened. So in one's mind and without knowing it, the nature of all things have changed. So begins One More Turn of the Page, the first novel from George A. Hopkins.
Set in 1980's Nairobi, the story is about Jean Hawthorne, a 36 year old well traveled meteorologist from the Midwest, who returns to Africa 25 years after her first visit as a child only to find that she has forgotten most of what she thought she remembered. Searching for clues to her elusive memory, she stumbles upon a haunting photograph whose discovery drives her on a pursuit of an unknown end that initiates from an uncertain beginning. Ultimately, the search for her past leads to love and friendship, intrigue and deception, murder and corruption. More importantly, for Jean, the quest culminates in a truer understanding of Kenya's horrific colonial history as well as a better understanding of her own.
The History
by the end...
of 1886, Eastern Africa, which had predominantly been controlled by native Maasai and Kikuyu tribes, became subjugated by the dominant colonial powers of Europe, namely Germany and Great Britain. Kenya and its northern neighbor Ethiopia came under the thumb of England as a British protectorate and Kenya became a "Crown Colony" in 1895.
With the defeat of the Germans in WWI, England's grip on Eastern Africa was strengthened, allowing for unfettered influence and power in the region. New legislation with regards to land tenure, created by a government formed solely with British representation, virtually eliminated native Kenyan ownership of prime regional real estate. Eastern Africans were not considered citizens in their own country. They were formally dispossessed of their property, confined to reservations, or held as feudal servants on their own lands.
White European and South African farmers encouraged to migrate and settle in the fertile Kenyan highlands exacerbated the transfer of agricultural prosperity from native Africans to their colonial occupiers. This, in conjunction with forced labor, impoverished conditions, and a nearly total lack of political representation of native East Africans, was the backdrop for the conflict that occurred during the majority of 20th century Kenyan history.
historical fiction
Set in the late 20th century in Western Kansas
Copyright - 2021
The Story
It all started when
two friends were discussing events regarding the previous evenings activities of their forty year high school class reunion. During that dialogue, one noted that the current personality traits of each were paradoxically opposite of what they once were forty years earlier. One moving in a more amiable direction and the other, not so much.
The idea of a novel based on the lives of two close friends who start out at a young age with little in common other than the community from which they were raised was conceived; where the maturation of each young man creates within both personalities that are diametrically opposed to each other as well as completely opposite of who they once were.
The Book
Influenced by each other, a close-knit community and a tightly coupled band of high school classmates evolve under the beclouding effect of an unsolved murder.
Amongst this drama, two former home-town athletes emerge and progress with a sense of entitlement that most of their classmates lack. Brought together by fate and athletic competition, Jackson’s and Bo’s divergent paths create conflict in what was once an unshakable friendship. Yet their fondness of each other and the baseball team that nourished their youth ushers them through their turmoil and the unforeseen destiny of each.
The History
home
It’s the first thread laid and the last strand broken. It’s the substance of all unbreakable relationships. Any relationship without a common community can never be as strong. Home. Like a good parent, it thrives in our company but bids us leave for it is our entrance into a world that we need to be part of.
Sumner Plaine, known to the faithful as S.P., is a quiet ag-based community claiming few noteworthy identifiers. It lies halfway between somewhere and nowhere, offering something and nothing. Most outsiders assume ag products are our principal invention but all who live here know that our primary commodity is wind. Here, the dust on the horizon absorbs any blue it comes in contact with. Yet nearly every evening, after the shrouded frontier has given up its identity, a new realm is created; one that you’d swear could only exist in the imagination of God.
To the world around us, it’s not that we don’t exist, it’s that we exist without purpose. We make jokes about our home too. The difference is, we don’t believe the jest. Sumner Plaine is at the core of each one of us…and more. It is the invisible nutrient of our growth and the conspicuous comfort in our demise.
