Former Hoopeston resident writes book

Nov. 21—HOOPESTON — Former Hoopeston resident Dennis Noyes has written a novel which takes place in a fictional version of his hometown.

Noyes is a Hoopeston High School Class of 1961 graduate who has written the novel "Yonders, Illinois."

The novel takes place in a fictionalized version of Vermilion County (Marigold County) in the fifties and in the nineties.

He presented the novel Nov. 15 at Boxcar Books and Vinyl in downtown Hoopeston.

"Although I have lived primarily in Spain since the mid-sixties, I kept in contact over the years with old friends and many lifetime residents of the Hoopeston area," Noyes said.

He graduated from Monmouth College in 1966 and worked the next 50 years in Spain. But he returned to Hoopeston as often as possible, often on assignment to cover races at Indianapolis, and other U.S. tracks.

Noyes was a professional motorcycle racer in Spain for 17 years and then a Grand Prix journalist and Spanish-language TV commentator for major Spanish networks.

Noyes says, "The frequent trips home allowed me to preserve the idiom, attitudes and perspectives of our region. I now reside in California with my wife of 50 years, Heidi."

His novel takes place in two time periods: 1959 and 1998. It deals with a miscarriage of justice that allowed a murderer from Yonders to escape the consequences of the triple homicide he committed for nearly 40 years before returning home where Chief Buster Lawton, who was a rookie cop at the time of the murders, seeks a chance to put right an old wrong.

"Although this description might suggest a police procedural whodunit, the novel, told through seven very different point-of-view characters and a blended narrative voice, depicts life as it was and as it became over four decades. It is the story of a young man gone very bad by a random event and of a smalltown police chief, known for his professional ethics and honesty, who has only in an instant to decide whether or not to go beyond the law he so respects to bring long-overdue justice," according to Noyes.

He said his publisher characterizes "Yonders, Illinois" as "a story where the heartland reveals tales of lost love, unsettled dilemmas and ghosts that refuse to vanish. Even murderers get homesick, but small towns have long memories."

"The novel is purely fictional, but the place and the essence of the people is, I believe, authentic and tells of times that seem both close and irretrievably distant, like the whistle of a night train on a railroad that is no longer there," Noyes said.

Racing, Writing

Noyes lived in Hoopeston from infancy until high school graduation. Since the days at the beginning of the 1960s when he raced a modified stock car at Vermilion County Speedway, he had two conflicting passions, racing and writing.

While attending Monmouth College, a short story of his won the Atlantic Monthly Creative Writing Contest for Students and he was invited to the Breadloaf Writers Conference at Middlebury, Vermont.

"There I was tutored by William Styron, at the time a young up-and-coming novelist who was then working on his classic novel, 'The Confessions of Nat Turner.' Styron was encouraging, but advised me not to try and write a novel until I had 'more life experience,'" he said.

"I certainly took his advice. After working in several Latin American countries (I was a dual major in college — English and Spanish) including a stint, after graduation, as a reporter for the Daily Journal in Caracas, Venezuela, I took a teaching job in Spain, intending to stay a year or so and to start my novel, a novel that would take place in my hometown of Hoopeston. But the racing bug bit again, this time motorcycle racing," he said.

"For 17 years I raced in Spain and England and won a Spanish National Championships before retiring in 1986 to enter the commentary booth as a Spanish language TV commentator for the national Spanish TV network and as a racing journalist for British, Spanish and American magazines. I finally retired in 2015 after my son, Kenny, who won two Spanish national racing titles, suffered a very serious accident from which he is still recovering slowly but favorably. It was after his crash that I turned in earnest to the notes of the novel I had been working on over many years," Noyes said.

He said of his novel, although it deals with a 40-year-old triple homicide in an Illinois canning factory town called Yonders, it is not a whodunit because the identity of the murderer is known by the Yonders Police Chief (and by the reader) from the opening pages. In order to protect the family reputation of a murder victim, a prominent citizen killed in the redlight district of the county seat (Damascus is Danville), the murderer is coerced into confessing to three murders he didn't commit instead of the one he did, in exchange for avoiding the death penalty.

The story is told by seven characters, each with a separate voice and perspective. And, although there are no reliable and confirmed sightings, some believe that the ghost of a murdered girl of the triple homicide, Running Rachel, still runs the tracks out by the graveyard and that the Devil, who takes an interest in the old murders, smokes Old Golds on the fifth floor of the town's tallest — but derelict — old building, occasionally visits Yonders folks not just in dreams but on their front porches by night.

The Yonders police chief, Buster, who was a rookie at the time of the murders, believes he knows the identity of the real murderer of the three Yonders citizens. The murderer, Keelan Pitnam, is released from prison in Nevada, where he fled after the crime, and returns nearly 40 years later to Yonders, thinking he has nothing to fear. The veteran chief sets about to determine what he strongly suspects and what the reader already knows via two unreliable but believable witnesses. He is then faced with the dilemma of whether to go beyond the law to avoid further injustice.

The backdrop for Yonders, Illinois, is a smalltown inspired by Hoopeston with its mix of solid midwesterners and fightin' Kentuckians and Hoopeston's local history, including the disconcerting arrival of a coven of witches and the response of the local religious community. The novel, with a mix of reminiscence and humor along with an illustration of how happenstance can change everything and ruin more than one life. The novel goes from the boomtown days of Yonders in the fifties to the factory closures of the recent decades in a town like so many in the Midwest, towns that remember better times, but still stand proud, according to Noyes.

"I have published four books in Europe, two in Spanish and two in English, both dealing with Grand Prix motorcycle racing, but this is the novel that William Styron cautioned me to delay until I had 'more life experience.' I believe the book's time has come. "Yonders, Illinois," is published by Trebol Editions of Barcelona, Spain, and will be available later in Spanish," he said.

The book is available online and at Boxcar Books and Vinyl in Hoopeston.