Suspense novelist is packing heat
Dan McCarty
Eagan cop authors ‘A Soldier Reborn’; is featured at Robert Trail Library event
When Dan McCarty writes about the military and police work in his suspense novel “A Soldier Reborn,” he relies less on library research and more on his own life experiences.
As a U.S. Army infantry veteran and Eagan police officer since 2005, he had plenty of source material to work with.
“I think I’d gotten tired of seeing things in military movies and law enforcement movies that weren’t real,” he said of writing “A Soldier Reborn,” which was published last year by Beaver’s Pond Press and centers on a small-town murder investigation.
McCarty will be discussing his book at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2, at the Robert Trail Library in Rosemount as part of the ongoing “Meet the Author” series presented by the Rosemount Area Arts Council.
“A Soldier Reborn” is McCarty’s second novel but the first he’s published. The Rosemount native wrote his first book over the course of his years at Eastview High School, where he graduated in 1999.
“I’d just kind of sit down and write a page or two here and there,” he said. “It’s about a high schooler, and there’s a lot of high school stuff in it. I never pursued publishing it – it was kind of a learning experience.”
McCarty dedicated “A Soldier Reborn” to Dane Ableidinger, a 3-month-old boy who died at a day care around the time the novel was being published. McCarty was the responding officer to that call.
“It’s just been a way for me to deal with some of the feelings I’ve had from that call,” he said of the book dedication. “The book will be a lasting monument to a life that was lost too early.”
“A Soldier Reborn” is the first novel in a trilogy McCarty has planned. He recently began work on the next book, “A Soldier Returns.”
“It’s a work in progress,” he said. “My wife and I had our third son this summer, so I’d been kind of taking a hiatus from writing with three little boys running around the house.”
Admission is free to the Robert Trail Library event. More about McCarty and “A Soldier Reborn” is at www.danmccartybooks.com.
