ZAGHRUDA is an Arabic word for a shrill, vocal outburst. One hears this distinct and unrestrained sound when women of the Arabic world are expressing great happiness.***Neither terrorist bombs in Tanzania nor assassin bullets in Belfast can deter Reuters journalist Smiley Sebastinelli as he travels the globe to collect information for a TV documentary. Smiley, together with his best friend and former Harvard classmate, Bill Yates, independently determine to try and improve the world they live in. The documentary depicts recent atrocities perpetrated by man on his fellow man. Bill, a multibillionaire software entrepreneur, plans to host a religious conference at Versailles to advocate a single world religion.Smiley travels to Africa, Northern Ireland, Algeria and Yugoslavia to gather information for the television documentary. In Tanzania, he falls in love with a beautiful Muslim widow, Nursel. She has a precocious nine, year, old daughter named Yasemin. Nursel and Yasemin move into Smiley's London flat and become a family in the very dangerous world in which Smiley moves.Smiley's travels put him in touch with Osama bin Laden and Slobodan Milosevic with predictably hazardous consequences. He also encounters a letter purportedly written by Jesus!Smiley and Bill wonder, in this time of the Internet with near instant worldwide communication, how atrocities can continue to occur. Will either of them be able to achieve their goal and make this a safer and saner world? Beau Johnston attended high school in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, and then went to the Phillips Exeter Academy for a year. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, receiving a degree of BS in Economics. Beau was an industrialist in the Pittsburgh, PA area until 1991, when he moved to the Innisbrook Resort in Palm Harbor, Florida, to pursue a writing career. The Red Hat is his first adventure novel, and he also wrote Zaghruda, an action adventure.
