Robert Hays
Robert Hays has been a newspaper reporter, public relations writer, magazine editor, and university professor and administrator. A native of Illinois, he taught in Texas and Missouri and retired in 2008 from a long journalism teaching career at the University of Illinois. His publications include academic journal and popular periodical articles and thirteen books, including his collaborative work with General Oscar Koch, G-2: Intelligence for Patton.​
Robert's work is sold in all major bookstores, including the following:​​
Fiction
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In 1955, at the height of alarm over the Emmett Till murder in Mississippi and after the Supreme Court ruling against school segregation, Associated Press reporter Rachel Feigen travels from Baltimore to Tennessee to report on a missing person case.
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Guy Saillot’s last contact with his family was a postcard from the Tennessee Bend Motel, a seedy establishment situated on beautiful Cherokee Lake. But they have no record he was ever a guest.
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As the investigation deepens, Feigen has problems of her own when three local extremists decide to teach a lesson to the “uppity jewgirl” from the North who’s poking around in things that are none of her concern.
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But events in the Tennessee Bend Motel’s room number 10 don’t turn out exactly as they’d planned.
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Ernst Kohl has spent nearly half his life in prison after being convicted of murder as a young man. Upon his release, with nowhere else to go, Kohl returns to his old family home on the outskirts of a small Michigan town, hoping for redemption, or at least understanding.
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He finds a dog, a girlfriend, and a job in quick succession, and it seems as if he might finally be able to leave the past behind and make a quiet life for himself. But some of the residents, including the town’s corrupt deputy sheriff, are less than thrilled to see him, and will stop at nothing to rid the town of its infamous resident.
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As events hurtle to an inevitable conclusion, Kohl is left to decide: At what point might a man break, and at what cost to himself?
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In the tranquil solitude of a darkened Room 12 in the ICU on the sixth floor of Memorial Hospital’s Wing C, a mortal existence is drawing to an end. His head and torso swathed in bandages, his arms and legs awkwardly positioned in hard casts and layers of heavy gauze, he’s surrounded by loved ones yet unable to communicate, isolated within his own thoughts and memories.
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He does not believe himself to be an extraordinary man, simply an ordinary one, a man who’s made choices, both good and bad. A man who was sometimes selfish, sometimes misguided, sometimes kind and wise. A man who fought in a war in which he lost a part of his soul, who then became a teacher and worked hard to repair the damage.
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When faced with the end, how does one reconcile the pieces of an ordinary life? Does a man have the right to wish for wings to carry him to a summit he believes he doesn’t deserve to reach?
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Life has been good in the old Prather house on the bluff overlooking Singleton’s Branch. Then the second “once in a hundred years” flood in a decade brings changes that will affect the Prather family for years to come.
Lacy, who sees beauty wherever she looks and expects others to be as good as she is, can no longer count on her big brother to protect her from an abusive husband, and the family learns a hard truth: No one is immune to the quirks of fate, be they blessings or tragedies, and the river takes more than it gives.
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Although he misses Melinda, the girl he left behind, after his time as a homeless orphan on the streets of Paducah, Jeter thinks being a groom in the White House stables, and life in general in the nation’s capital, is all he’ll ever want. His friend and mentor, Shakespeare-quoting Union Army Captain Joseph Emerson, is an advisor to President Lincoln. With the President just re-elected and the war with the Confederacy won, they all see bright days ahead.
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But an assassin’s bullet brings their world crashing down, and Jeter and the Captain see their own grief reflected in the mourning of millions of citizens as the captain commands an Honor Guard on the funeral train that bears Lincoln’s remains on the long cross-country trip home to Illinois.
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As Jeter explores the cities where the train stops enroute, he adds his own real-life stories and comes to appreciate the cultural mix that makes America one great nation.
Nonfiction
Oscar Koch's sterling performance as Gen. George S. Patton Jr.'s intelligence chief, G-2, was a critical element of Patton's success in World War II and earned Koch the reputation as arguably the most brilliant intelligence officer in U.S. Army history.
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His collection and analysis of information in early winter 1944 led him to issue stern warnings of the German buildup preceding the Battle of the Bulge and let Patton be prepared, but higher headquarters refused to listen. Today, intelligence specialists cite that work as a model for combat intelligence training. After the war, Koch went on to help overhaul the CIA and, in retirement, earned a coveted Guggenheim Fellowship to support research and writing on intelligence in combat.
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His unlikely friendship with Robert Hays, a young journalist who also happened to be a veteran of Koch's beloved U.S. Third Army, led to a book that has become a crucial source for military historians.
Now, Robert Hays offers a deeply personal account of their relationship, reveals the general's astonishingly gentle and caring nature, and describes Koch's philosophy and concerns about the intriguing field of intelligence. Overarching all is the poignant story of Koch's valiant battle with terminal cancer. The reader will understand why Hays grants Oscar Koch the eminent rank of personal hero and feels an obligation to help assure his place in history.