WINTER IN THE HEART by David Poyer - SIGNED FIRST EDITION BOOK

In the once prosperous but now impoverished western Pennsylvania town of Raymondsville, three unlikely people are brought together. Seventeen-year-old Phil Romanelli has to interview an elderly person for his social-studies class, and he chooses, on a whim, W. T. Halvorsen, who is long retired from the oil fields, lives alone several miles out of town, and doesn't welcome the intrusion. It's Phil who gets him to the hospital when Halvorsen is stricken by a mysterious illness that has also affected others in the area. One day in the library, where he is doing research on toxic waste, Phil meets Jaysine Farmer, the electrologist at the StyleShoppe. Jaysine is reading up on syphilis, which she has contracted from her married lover, Brad Boulton, president of Thunder Oil. Each for different reasons, these three uncover and try to stop the environmental destruction Boulton's corporation is wreaking on their community.

Halvorsen is being scapegoated for the crimes of the rich and the mighty. Dragged into a western Pennsylvania courtroom in chains and shackles, Halvorsen must convince a judge and jury that everything they know about their state, their government and their town's chief employer is a lie. His is a tale of organized crime and a corrupt oil company CEO who are dumping toxic waste into a quiet rural community for profit; of local officials who look the other way in hopes of saving their impoverished town; of one honest man who must fight for his life, his friends, his home, a man who must in the end convince the judge and jury of the truth - or die in prison. And if W.T. Halvorsen dies, everything he gave his life for will die with him.