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KPBS Midday Edition

San Diego author T. Jefferson Parker is out with a new book: 'A Thousand Steps'

Author T. Jefferson Parker is at the San Juan de Ulua ruin in Veracruz, Mexico in this undated photo.
T. Jefferson Parker
Author T. Jefferson Parker is at the San Juan de Ulua ruin in Veracruz, Mexico in this undated photo.

Three-time Edgar Award winner and New York Times bestselling author T. Jefferson Parker has a new book out called, "A Thousand Steps." The new book is a stand-alone thriller, a departure from his detective series set in Fallbrook.

"A Thousand Steps" is set in Laguna Beach in the 1960s, and it forms a coming-of-age story with a deadly mystery, surrounded by surf, sand, hippies, rock and roll and in the backdrop of the Vietnam War.

The cover of "A Thousand Steps" by T. Jefferson Parker.
Macmillan Publishers
The cover of "A Thousand Steps" by T. Jefferson Parker.

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Parker joined KPBS Midday Edition on Wednesday to talk about his new novel.

"I felt compelled when I started remembering the times that I spent there as a young boy at the age of 14 approximately, and it was time for me to write another book," Parker said. "The more I thought about 1968 Laguna and the things that I saw there and heard about there and read about there, the more interested I became, and 'A Thousand Steps' kind of just presented itself as a story to me and compelled me to sit down and write it."

He said the title of the book comes from a childhood memory.

"I love that beach. It was one of the first places I saw when I was a kid going to Laguna. I'll never forget that beach," Parker said. "The first time I went there, I don't know I was probably 14, and I walked down the thousand steps to Thousand Steps Beach and I had to count them as any kid would do, and there were 220-something I remember."

Parker will be speaking and signing copies of his new book at his book launch event on Saturday, Jan. 22, at the Pala Mesa Resort in Fallbrook.