Where's Frank?: An Intrepid Leader, 18 Boy Scouts, 10,000 Miles in an Open Truck

"Where's Frank" piqued enthusiasm and high interest when first circulated as a short version to a group of interested people. The true story is based on the recent finding of Scoutmaster Curtiss Gilbert's journal of an improbable Boy Scout trip of 10,000 miles in the back of a fruit truck post-WWII. It started in Yakima, Washington 70 years ago and now includes the memories of the seven surviving Scouts.

What made Gilbert so unusual to take on a project impossible today with its risks and adventures--around the entire continental United States? He released young teens to explore New York City on their own. How and why would he leave boys behind, far from home, to have to catch up? What happened to them? How about the inevitable crazy antics, accidents, injuries and truck problems? What really occurred to the boys in the truck and their leader? And how did these long-ago experiences affect those of us who live to tell the stories of our adventure--now in this protective era of risk-averse child raising.

Lloyd Johnson is the author of Living Stones, Cry of Hope and Uprooting the Olive Tree published by Koehler Books in 2013 to 2016. He is a retired surgeon who turned to fiction writing as a way to share his special interest in the Middle East. Johnson is a member of a Seattle writing group, and blogs regularly on Israel/Palestine subjects. He is a Clinical Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington in the Department of Surgery, and is a Fellow in the American College of Surgeons, and past president of the Seattle Surgical Society. He authored 26 scientific articles in peer reviewed journals/texts. Johnson has worked and traveled extensively overseas, including Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and served for six years as volunteer executive director and board member of a humanitarian NGO in Central Asia. The author lives with his wife Marianne in Edmonds, Washington where they enjoy their adult children and grandchildren.