Author to read, sign book at Bolingbrook library

Life, in all of its myriad facets -- family, marriage, parenting, faith, politics -- can be funny, frustrating and fulfilling.

But it is never dull, says writer Tom Hernandez when talking about the 70 essays that comprise "Chocolate Cows and Purple Cheese and other tales from the homefront," his first book.

The book, a collection of newspaper columns Hernandez wrote over the last 11 years, was published in April by IUniverse. It explores the common issues of adulthood today.

Hernandez will read from, and sign copies of his book at 7 p.m. Nov. 10 at the Fountaindale Public Library's Bolingbrook branch at 300 W. Briarcliff Road. Books will be available for purchase at the library. Other readings and signings are being scheduled.

Hernandez is a fairly typical suburban husband and father often amazed by the many challenges life brings day to day, sometimes minute by minute.

"Real life, not reality television life, isn't black and white," Hernandez said. "It's 1,000 shades of gray. It stretches from the dinner table to the workplace and it's filled with joy, sadness, certainty, doubt, conflict and communion."

From November 1998 to April 2009, Hernandez wrote about life and community in ways both personal and universal, in his weekly "Homefront" column in The Plainfield Sun.

Often those reflections were filtered through his own family, friends and experiences.

"Sometimes, when people would take me to task for something I wrote, I'd tell them that I have nothing to hide. 'My life is an open book,' I'd say. Well, now my life really is a book," Hernandez said.

He and his wife, Kellie live in Plainfield Township with their teenage daughters, Emma and Olivia and their Shih Tzu, Ozzie.

Hernandez learned unique lessons about racial and ethnic diversity firsthand, growing up on the east side of Joliet, an Anglo child surrounded by his Mexican adoptive father's family.

His mother remarried when Hernandez was a toddler. His father, Anthony P. Hernandez, was a Will County Sheriff's deputy for about 30 years before joining the U.S. Marshal's Office for about a year. He died at age 51 in January 1997.

Hernandez graduated from Lewis University with a degree in journalism and worked for about 10 years as a newspaper reporter for the Joliet Herald-News, The Beacon-News in Aurora and Pioneer Press in the northwest suburbs.

In 1996 Hernandez began a five-year stint doing communications for the Illinois State Board of Education. His time encompassed both former Governors George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich.

"As a reporter I tried for 10 years to get inside government to see how it really worked, and once I got in there, it was a little scary, kind of like watching sausage being made," he said.

Hernandez became director of communications for St. Charles School District 303 on Sept. 10, 2001.

St. Charles was in the midst of the now infamous mold crisis which would close St. Charles East High School for 18 months while the district spent $24 million to clean and remediate the building.

"In all of my years of professional life, I have never seen anything tear a community apart so badly," Hernandez said. "But we had an excellent, dedicated and tightly knit team that worked more as family than as employees, and we survived."

Then, the next day, Sept. 11, 2001, the world changed.

"In my first six months on the job we dealt with mold, terrorism, anthrax and more politics and community unrest than I'd wish on my worst enemy," Hernandez said.

In November 2006, Hernandez became director of community relations for Plainfield Community Consolidated School District 202, the fifth-largest, and until this year, the fastest-growing, school district in Illinois. District 202 includes a portion of Bolingbrook.

The area's extraordinary growth over the last decade has served as a fascinating subtext for many of the stories in "Chocolate Cows."

"Few communities have experienced what this area has, and that growth has affected every aspect of how we live," Hernandez said.