Seal Beach resident Steve Snyder’s book, “Shot Down: The True Story of Pilot Howard Snyder and the Crew of the B-17 Susan Ruth,” was released about a year ago.
His independently-published book has since been garnering awards.
Snyder’s first print run of 2,000 books sold out, and he printed another 5,000 copies through his one person publishing company, Sea Breeze Publishing LLC, named for the street on The Hill where he and his wife Glenda live.
‘Shot Down’ has an Amazon reader review rating of 4.9 out of 5.
In addition to the stellar reviews, “Shot Down” has won nine book awards.
At the end of May, Steve and his wife Glenda flew to New York to attend the Book Expo America convention held at the Javits Center.
During their visit, Snyder received three medals as three of his nine awards. A Winner Military Medal and a Finalist Historical Non-Fiction Medal were given out at the 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Awards reception held at the Harvard Club of New York City.
Snyder also received a Silver Medal U.S. History at the 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards Ceremony held at the historic Providence Club.
Last fall, Snyder and his wife visited England to retrace his father’s footsteps while he was stationed in England during World War II.
From there, they continued on to Belgium where they met up with their three sons, Doug, Devin, and Clayton, who all grew up in Seal Beach.
The family was there to attend the 70th Anniversary Celebrations of the Liberation of Belgium and of his father’s plane being shot down.
During several days of ceremonies, they met Denise Bauer, the U.S. Ambassador to Belgium, who invited the Snyder family to visit her at her residence at the U.S. Embassy in Brussels.
Afterwards, Clayton Snyder went on to visit friends in Germany and took a little side trip.
Clayton visted Munich to present a copy of ‘Shot Down’ to 91-year-old Hans Berger, the German Luftwaffe pilot, who shot down the B-17 Susan Ruth.
During his research for writing the book, Snyder had located Hans, who became an interpreter after the war, and interviewed him for his book.
“Shot Down” tells the story about the dramatic experiences of each member of a B-17 crew, piloted by Snyder’s father, after their plane was knocked out of the sky by German fighters over the French Belgian border.
The print edition of the book has more than 200 time period photographs of the people who were involved and the places where their stories took place.
It is available at book stores and online stores including Amazon.
Many air and war museums, including the Lyon Air Museum in Santa Ana, also carry “Shot Down.”
For more information, visit http://SteveSnyderAuthor.com.
Snyder does a great deal of speaking about his book.
He makes PowerPoint presentations detailing important facts and attends book signings.
His next speaking event will be this coming Sunday, June 14 at 2 p.m., at Barnes & Noble in the Bella Terra shopping center in Huntington Beach at 7777 Edinger Ave.
Snyder will make a presentation and then sign his book for those in attendance.
