By ROBERT LINNEHAN | The Haddonfield Sun
Shirley Hough helped fulfill one of her husband’s lifelong goals — seven years after his death. The aspiring author had his first novel posthumously released this year by local publishing group Ross and Perry, Inc.
Donald E. Hough passed away on July 24, 2002, Shirley said. He had been working on “Deaths of the Shah” for years, she said, and was just beginning to collect notes from noted literary scholars when he passed away. Now, people all over the world can buy the book online, as it’s featured on several Internet book stores, most notably Amazon.com.
“My husband loved to write, and we’d sit down at the beach at Brigantine. He would write, and I would read. He just loved to write,” Shirley said. “My husband was 71. He was an engineer, and it was the first novel he tried to write.”
The majority of the book was written on the beaches of Brigantine, Shirley said, where the couple would vacation during the summer. Being an avid reader, she knew it was good and definitely could be published.
“Deaths of the Shaw,” is a fictional novel with historical accuracies intertwined throughout its chapters, Shirley said. The first few chapters take place in Iran, but the scene soon shifts to South Jersey where most of the action takes place locally in Haddonfield and Atlantic City.
It’s a fantastic murder mystery, said George Ross Fisher, chairman of Ross and Perry Inc.
See this week’s print edition of The Sun for the full story.