Alta's Curse

After many dark years in a six-by-ten cell, Sam Alta Dryden finally saw the light. He headed home from prison and swore he'd go straight even as the warden warned, "Going home is not the best place to start over." Alta nodded politely, but was determined to sell off his moonshine empire, win back the love of his dying wife Shelby, and to revive Tallapoosa, Georgia, a town with a rather checkered past.

Alta's new success was legendary: he regained Shelby's trust, launched a major home building company, and was elected Mayor of Tallapoosa. But he was haunted by the advice of his prison psychologist: "Alta, yours is the curse of genius. You want to be the smartest guy in the room and that makes you a sucker for every crooked deal that comes your way."

Can Alta stay legit when his moonshine buddies try to draw him into an illegal gas-tapping deal? Can he break the curse, or will it break him? Alta's Curse, a novel by Patrick Curran, was inspired by the life of a notorious West Georgia outlaw.

Patrick Curran is the author of two previous books: COBRA: The X Factor in Strategy Execution, an organizational change classic, based upon his experiences consulting in twenty-one countries; and Acid Reign, a Cold War novel on the hazards of uranium mining on the Colorado plateau.

After earning an undergraduate degree at University of California, Santa Barbara, Curran served four years in the US Navy as an explosive ordnance diver, including one year as a team leader in Vietnam. Curran returned home to earn advanced degrees in English and organizational design before becoming an award-winning industrial film writer/producer for The Coca-Cola Company. He later became a partner with the organizational change consultancy Keilty, Goldsmith, and Boone before launching his own firm, the Curran Consulting Group.

Curran and his wife Joan split their time between Atlanta, GA and Steamboat Spring, CO, where he is a regular at the Steamboat Spring Writing Group.