Sirocco

About the Book

Sirocco                                                                                                        1967

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Victory in the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab states lies in the balance and CIA agent Paul Scott is the key.  As an American correspondent sent into Egypt, he has freedom of movement.  This enables him to get vital information out of the country that has been collected by an Israeli secret agent.  However, treachery is at every corner, and Scott’s knowledge of what is going on is limited. Thus he is dependent on others to help him while the Egyptian CID and the Russian KGB are never more than a step away.

Life in this intelligence game of trickery and success is counted as of little value in the overall scheme of winning the impending war, and pawns fall with frightening regularity.

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About the Author

Dale Soderberg majored in English at Gettysburg College and in Systematic Theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg.  While in college he was encouraged to begin creative writing by his professors; while in seminary he developed a deep love for and interest in the Middle East, especially those areas related to the Bible.  

Over the years he has originated, organized, and directed tours to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.  During two visits to Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan just prior to the Six Day War, his interest in the area and the diverging cultures existing side-by-side ballooned.  This was in part because he had a couple of heart-stopping experiences: having his car strip-searched for weapons by Syrian police, and hearing rifle shots in Jerusalem while he and his companions were exposed next to ‘no-man’s land’.  The Arab maps which identified Israel as ‘the occupied area’ coupled with the machine gun trained upon him and the other members of his tour groups when they crossed into Israel at Jerusalem’s Mandlebaum Gate intensified his strong sense of the bitter feelings which ultimately led to the 1967 War.  He returned home determined to chronicle as much of what he had experienced as he could.  The result is Sirocco, a fictional account of how the war was won so quickly by Israel.

Along with his writing, the consequence of his many other creative activities over the years has brought him inclusion in the Marquis editions of Who’s Who in the East, American Education, the World, and America. 

He and his wife, Marjorie, live in Hamilton, New York where the two have close ties with Colgate University.