Neil Down

There were two separate parades for astronaut Neil Armstrong in his hometown of Wapakoneta, Ohio. The first was in 1966 after his Gemini 8 mission. The second came in 1969, a few weeks after Apollo 11, when he became the first man to walk on the moon. The first parade was dwarfed and overshadowed by the second. But in "Neil Down," a work of historical fiction, it provides Danny Hitchens critical information he uses to set up the unthinkable. Danny is a teenager growing up in a neighboring town that is even smaller than Wapakoneta. In Botkins, he is insulated from most of the factors that made the sixties turbulent. He grew up playing baseball, questioning religion, and worrying about girls and his future after high school. Danny has a great admiration for those in the space program and the military. This is heightened when his brother joins the Army and deploys to Vietnam. Danny's world is shattered by a series of tragedies. These incidents combine with his issues with religion to turn him dark and vengeful, filled with rage. He lashes out at those he perceives as slighting him. His paybacks escalate until he finds himself, in a decade of high profile assassinations, planning the inconceivable. He will use information obtained during the Gemini 8 Homecoming parade to kill Neil Armstrong.