BY KAREN BOSSICK

A tantalizing story of World War II will be presented on Tuesday at The Community Library in Ketchum.

Steven Mayfield will discuss his novel “Sixty Seconds, which examines the stories of people on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean as the clock ticks down the final minute of the war at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 23, at The Community Library.

They include legendary war correspondent; a madwoman and her unwitting accomplice in a deranged assassination attempt; a 15-year-old girl singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in Times Square, her soldier brother still in Germany; a Nazi war criminal undergoing interrogation; a German foot soldier frantically dodging Russian patrols as he attempts to surrender to Americans, and a Polish couple who endured the seemingly unendurable only to be separated by an ocean as they are about to become parents.

these seemingly disparate and yet inextricably intertwined people hurtle toward their own climactic finishes as midnight and the official beginning of V-E Day approaches on 7 May 1945.

The book was a finalist for the 2025 CIBA Ernest Hemingway Award (Wartime Fiction), and included on Literary Hub's 100 Small Press Notables of 2025. A book signing will follow Mayfield’s talk.

Reserve your place at https://thecommunitylibrary.libcal.com/event/16411477. The program will be livestreamed at https://vimeo.com/event/5970393 and recorded for later viewing on the Library Archive.