{"id":12903,"date":"2013-07-30T08:59:18","date_gmt":"2013-07-30T13:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=12903"},"modified":"2013-07-29T15:06:48","modified_gmt":"2013-07-29T20:06:48","slug":"book-report-the-phantom-of-the-footbridge-by-ron-boutwell-1999-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/30\/book-report-the-phantom-of-the-footbridge-by-ron-boutwell-1999-2006\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: <i>The Phantom of the Footbridge<\/i> by Ron Boutwell (1999, 2006)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/phantomofthefootbridge.jpg\" width=\"200\" alt=\"Book cover\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"4\">I picked up this book at the local used bookstore in its local interest section, but it doesn&#8217;t seem to be available online even though Springfield is lousy with them.  It was published by a local Christian theatre company, and its protagonist is a young pastor who takes over a church (that later becomes the playhouse of the theatre company) in 1925.  On his walk from the train station to the boarding house where he&#8217;s staying, a hooded figure meets him on a footbridge and tells the new arrival that he will bring a child who needs help tomorrow night, and the pastor must help him.  This is the phantom of the footbridge.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a very short novel&#8211;140 pages&#8211;carries with it more than a hint of Dickens in its plotting and characters.  Unfortunately, the execution is not as picturesque as Dickens, but the author did a lot of research on the environs of North Springfield in the middle 1920s, and he makes sure to mention every landmark that people pass as they walk (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.dustbury.com\/archives\/12607\" target=\"_blank\">not that there&#8217;s anything wrong with that<\/a>).  But the story lacks in those bits.<\/p>\n<p>But I enjoyed it enough in its expository way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I picked up this book at the local used bookstore in its local interest section, but it doesn&#8217;t seem to be available online even though Springfield is lousy with them. It was published by a local Christian theatre company, and its protagonist is a young pastor who takes over a church (that later becomes the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books","category-springfield"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12903"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12905,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12903\/revisions\/12905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}