Prairie Lights

Former Iowa Citian John J. Waters will read from his debut novel, River City One. The tale of a man and the memory that haunts him, River City One is the poetic and compassionate story of John Walker, a lawyer and ex-Marine adrift in a nameless city. Home from the war, he has become a man on the edge, quietly raging against the people he must now work for and live among—the kind of people incapable of understanding the terror he felt in combat and the guilt he carries in his heart.

John J. Waters graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with a degree in English literature, then served multiple combat tours as a Scout Sniper platoon commander and ground intelligence officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. After his last deployment to Iraq in 2014, Waters moved to Iowa City, where he lived for three years of law school. Prairie Lights became Waters’ second home, the place where his imagination awakened to the ideas and characters that animate his debut novel.  He lives in Nebraska.