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Ponder Novel Published
The Summerville News, March 15, 2007
Publish America recently announced the publication of a novel by local tax accountant Henderson Ponder. The novel, San Mario Island is Ponder's second book.
Ponder started writing in the early nineteen-sixties. When he finished his first work, Mesha, like most new writers he thought that all one had to do was to write a good story and submit it to a publisher. These are Ponder's own words, “I knew that I had written the best story in the world. So, when I submitted my manuscript I was surprised that only one publisher offered to read it. Also, when that publisher turned me down, I was totally devastated and vowed never to spend long hard months writing again.” He did not know that getting a staff editor of a large publishing house such as McGraw-Hill to read an unknown, non-celebrity writer's work, was in itself an achievement.
Ponder's book, San Mario Island, is a fiction novel based in part on his personal memory of a young man with whom he served during his fist enlistment in the army. Although the theme is pure fantasy, like most fiction writers, Ponder admits that he has put a little part of himself into the plot. However, he is adamant that readers understand the nature of this obvious ego trait, and withhold judgment until reading the book and the addendum at the end.
The author, Henderson Frank Ponder, grew up along the banks of Raccoon Creek near the little cotton mill town of Berryton, Georgia. Like many young men crossing the threshold of puberty at the end of the depression, news of the war sparked within him a promise of adventure... not a threat, as it should have.
Trained as a covert operations specialist, he served during the latter days of World War II on detached service with the Covanich Group... a remnant of the Mihailovich Underground in Yugoslavia.
Using memories of people and events of that era and the unrelenting memory of his old war buddy Mario, whose father was reputed to be connected with the mafia in New York City, Ponder has created a narrative that is full of surprises for all who venture to read San Mario Island.
Laced into the fabric of the story as memory flashbacks, events from the past bring into focus a truly gripping saga of love, hate, fear, and intrigue that is bound to hold the reader's attention until the very end.
Henderson Ponder is a life-long resident of Chattooga County, Georgia. He is a tax accountant who has practiced in that profession since 1953. At the age of eighty, he still maintains an office in Summerville, where he serves clients from several southeastern states. He is married to the former Mary Frances Gilmer, also a native of Chattooga County. They have two children, Claudette Mahan of Moultrie, Georgia and Jenette Slay of Armuchee, Georgia. The Ponders also have five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
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