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Author and Artist Bill Comeau Seeks Solid Gold in His New Book

The renaissance man will read at Books on the Square on October 22

East Side Monthly Magazine ·

If anyone has earned the title of “troubadour” it’s Reverend Dr. A. Bill Comeau. As an artist he dabbles in multiple disciplines, and as an educator he feels as comfortable in a classroom as he does in a house of worship. Over a career that would make the most ambitious among us do a double take, Comeau has published poems, plays and novels, recorded albums – among them a few Grammy finalists – proven to be an accomplished painter and even created the Biggest Little State in the Union ad campaign for Rhode Island in the early 1980s. Never one to slow down, the musician-writer-teacher-reverend has just released his latest work, the novel Seeking Solid Gold.

The book, which is inspired by Comeau’s own life, tells the touching story of a romance between an aspiring musician and a Radio City Rockette.

“It’s a stretching of the story of my life in music from 1968 to present and trying to get a gold record but instead ruining a couple of relationships,” Comeau says. He may not have had a decades-spanning romance with a Rockette like his protagonist did, but therein lies the joys of fiction.

“I only met [a Rockette] once, but this follows what would have happened if I could have pursued her,” he says. “With a novel you can make history do what it didn’t.”

Comeau will be at Books on the Square to read from Seeking Solid Gold on October 22 at 7pm. In addition the Providence Art Club, to which Comeau is a longtime member, will be presenting 20 of his paintings from the last ten years on October 16. BookSq.com, ProvidenceArtClub.org

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