On January 13th at 5:00, author Dan Conti will visit the Pike County Library with his new book, “Pikeville.” Copies will be available for purchase.

Set in 1924, the mysterious death of a coal miner leads Sheriff Ben Laurel to pursue possible links to a girlfriend’s family, fellow miners, the coal company and the Ku Klux Klan. His probe ruffles feathers during the Prohibition Era and his campaign for re-election.

As the story develops, Pikeville is undergoing rapid population growth, construction of new roads and rail lines, its first hospital and a luxury hotel. Sheriff Ben Laurel’s pursuit of justice is shaped by his family’s legacy, his experience in World War I, race relations in the military and the recovery from a global pandemic that killed 50 million people.

Although Pikeville is a work of fiction, the novel explores several aspects of its actual historical significance, such as the city’s role in the Civil War, the place where one of America’s first racially-integrated cemetaries was established, and a community in which the KKK chose to march and rally in July, 1924.

Dan Conti’s career spanned more than 40 years as a broadcast news reporter, anchor, and producer in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. He won more than 35 awards from the Associated Press, including honors for seven documentaries. Pikeville is Conti’s second novel. The first, Nittany Lion (2023-24), is about a Vietnam veteran who returns to Pennsylvania in 1970 and the struggles endured by his young family. URlink called the book “a quiet triumph” and Books to Life Marketing described it as “a powerful, intimate portrait of a family trying to hold itself together as the world around them fractures.” He currently resides in Morehead.