Piano Man

After his bandmates abandon him at a hotel in northwest Oklahoma, Dick Gill, a big-band piano player from New York City, doesn't know where to go or what to do. Work is hard to find in a post-World War II small town, but Dick is fortunate to become the night clerk at the very hotel at which he has been staying. As he integrates himself into the community - finding a job, friends, and even love, a long-held secret and a medical crisis threaten his new life and force him to question everything he knows.

After his bandmates abandon him at a hotel in northwest Oklahoma, Dick Gill, a big-band piano player from New York City, doesn't know where to go or what to do. Work is hard to come by in a post-World War II small town, but Dick is fortunate to find a job as night clerk in the very hotel in which he has been staying. As he integrates himself into the community - finding a job, friends, and even love, a long-held secret and a medical crisis threaten his new life and force him to question everything he knows.

Dan Baxter is a retired obstetrician-gynecologist who grew up in northwest Oklahoma in a family of farmers, ranchers, carpenters, and preachers. In the summer before his senior year in high school, he began working in radio and television. This twelve-year career would take him to Saigon in 1967 and 1968 at American Forces Vietnam Network. When his two years in the Army were over, he returned to Tulsa and a career in radio and television news. While working at a Tulsa television station, he told his wife he wanted to return to college for a medical degree. With her help and the G.I. Bill, he became an obstetrician-gynecologist who delivered almost three thousand babies and took care of women for thirty years. Upon retiring in 2011, he moved to northwest Arkansas and joined a life-writing group. He produced two hundred memoir pieces, along with poetry and fiction before bowing to his wife's long-standing wish that he tell his story he had been carrying since his youth. This tale of a New York City piano player stranded in Baxter's home town after World War II incorporated many of the true and not-so-true stories of a small college town on the prairie. Dick Gills' finding of love and acceptance occurs in spite of a secret and a life crisis. One reviewer said the town itself is a major character. Baxter is working on his next project: a compilation of the best of his memoir pieces. He may be reached at dbaxter1177@gmail.com.