Author Jack Bartley to sign books in Rehoboth Nov. 30

Browseabout Books will host author Jack Bartley as he signs copies of “Smoke on the Water” and “Hilo Dome” from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 30, in Rehoboth Beach. 

Based on real-life events, "Smoke on the Water” begins in 1971 as the war in Vietnam still rages. Jason Conley, a recent college graduate, finds himself paying the price for the "free" university education an NROTC scholarship provided, and he now owes the Navy four years of service. Not wanting to go to war, he devises a scheme to serve on an oceanographic research support vessel in Hawaii, thousands of miles from the battle zone.

Through a series of events and miscues, some of his own making, Conley is transferred to a new command, a destroyer escort that deploys on a WestPac tour to Vietnam the very day he comes aboard. How will he reconcile his feelings about the Vietnam War while at the same time directing a destroyer escort on the gunline supporting U.S. and South Vietnamese troops? How will his personal life be affected by the dictates of the Navy? And more importantly, how does he come out of this alive?

Bartley lived in Hawaii for five years, serving in the U.S. Navy. 

After his service, Bartley became an ecology professor at the University of Delaware, and he created a program to bring students back to the islands to study reef systems and Hawaiian culture during UD’s winter session.

Walking around the town of Hilo, he began envisioning the windward side of the Big Island as it might exist 200 years in the future. “Hilo Dome” is the result.

Now retired from the university, Bartley lives with his wife Susan in Ocean View.