De Pere author publishes Halloween novel set in his home town

Local writer beats back Parkinson's disease to publish his debut book—and become one of De Pere’s best known citizens

John Dixon’s debut novel, A Map of the Dark, is set on Halloween night, 1963. Local children dressed as ghosts and hoboes chase one another on and off porches and through the streets, hunting for candy and thrills, while their parents fill the local bars, drinking, joking, and fighting, bobbing for apples and dancing to the jukebox. But as the evening unfolds, the paths of key characters converge in a series of shocking events that change the lives of everyone involved.

Born and raised in De Pere, Wisconsin, Dixon is very familiar with the streets and landmarks of his home town. So he decided to use them as the setting for A Map of the Dark. George Street, Broadway, Ontario, Webster, Legion Park—these and more are as sharply evoked in his book as the names of the candies the kids squabble over: Dum Dums, Slo Pokes, Clark Bars . . .

A Map of the Dark has already received attention from the trade in advance of its publication on October 10. Publisher’s Weekly praised the way it “churns with action,” while Kirkus Reviews said the book “recall(s) fellow Midwesterner Sinclair Lewis in its stark portrayal of social hierarchies and the lengths to which people will go in order to fit in.”

The world Dixon portrays is certainly a tough one—as Kirkus Reviews commented: “In this novel, adults are mean, but little boys are meaner.” But while the events portrayed in the book are dominated by the social tensions of the period, especially the friction between town folk and “farmers,” A Map of the Dark makes for exhilarating and compelling reading. The dialog crackles with dark wit and humor as the story races along towards its stunning climax.

John Dixon is a widely known figure in De Pere—if not yet primarily for his writing. Many people know him as “Parkens”—the man with Parkinson’s disease who spends all his free time, when he’s not writing, walking around his home town.

It’s a fascinating story. After years of worsening symptoms, which eventually made it impossible for him to type and by late 2000 left him bedridden, Dixon was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Even after he began taking the medications that now keep his condition under control, it took extensive therapy before he regained his strength. The first thing he was able to do was start typing again, and resume work on A Map of the Dark. “And when I could walk well enough to walk by myself again,” he explains, “I started walking and wouldn’t stop.”

At first, there were problems:

“Since I had the characteristic Parkinson’s stagger and often fell down in the street, I would be mistaken for a drunk. I took to walking late at night. I soon got to know all the local cops, because they’d get calls about a drunk guy wandering the streets. Once in a while my legs would lock up (the Parkinson’s freeze), and I’d have to sit down wherever I was and wait for it to pass. The cops would sometimes drive me home, but as they got to know me and the disease they would often just sit and wait with me. There’s not a lot of crime in De Pere at three a.m, so we’d have long chats. Soon they were stopping to chat even when I was walking along fine, and in the winter they’d stop to let me warm up in the back of their squad car.
“Eventually, I began to walk during the day, too. The reactions of people in De Pere varied: the adults were often terrified by me, while children were usually curious. And the high-school kids were downright hostile at first. But it was the high-school students who got to know me first. They were the ones who ‘introduced’ me to the rest of the town. One night when I was walking home I passed a post-prom party and got the usual catcalls: ‘Hey, dude! Have another drink.’ This time, instead of ignoring them I walked up to the group in the front yard and explained that I wasn’t drunk, I had a disease which made me look as if I was drunk. They were so abashed I felt I had to apologize for ruining their party! They invited me to stay, which I didn’t, but from that day on, whenever I froze up there seemed to be a student nearby to drive me home.”

At this point, Dixon’s condition has improved considerably; new medications have relegated the stagger and the freeze to the past. But he still keeps walking, every evening and often late into the night. Although what he writes is fiction, he’s also become a sort of unofficial historian of De Pere—and a valued news source—through his many interactions with his fellow citizens. Because of his gift for storytelling, people invite him into their homes to watch TV or to share their dinner, and catch up on what’s happening in town. The cops still stop to chat with him, of course, and he shoots the breeze with the clerks in the all-night grocery and the gas station—even with the occasional drug dealer in his old neighborhood.

“By now,” he says, “most people in De Pere know me by name.”

And they all know he has a book coming out.