Books
“Resurrecting Forest Grove” Premieres on Giant Screen
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The Rundles first visited Forest Grove School in Bettendorf, Iowa in 2009 while filming the decaying school in a blizzard for their Emmy-nominated historical documentary “Country School: One Room – One Nation.” The school appeared to be on the brink of collapse.
In 2012, a small group of preservationists stood before the hollowed-out shell of the unique and historic 1873 Forest Grove School No. 5 and decided it could, and should, be saved.
“Resurrecting Forest Grove” cinematically tells the dramatic true story behind the seemingly-impossible task of restoring a vintage one-room school to its 1920s appearance. Footage and interviews gathered over a decade depict the problems they faced and the solutions they employed as they attempted to bring this decaying rural icon back to life. The surprises and successes of this challenging restoration project are intercut with a vivid historical portrait of the “Roaring 20s” in rural America.
“It has been an exciting experience to watch and document the ‘resurrection’ of Forest Grove No. 5 over the past decade,” said producer Tammy Rundle. “It took a dedicated and hard-working group of visionaries to bring the school back to life. It is an inspirational story that will make you think twice about saying, ‘It can’t be done.’”
Forest Grove School Preservation was founded in 2012 and began restoring the weatherboards of the one-room school soon after. With assistance from Cedar Rapids architect Doug Steinmetz, volunteers worked from historic photos to reconstruct the structure’s bell tower, windows and doors, foundation, roof, floors, and signage. The restoration project was featured in the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s magazine, “Preservation,” in 2018.
Funds were raised for the restoration effort through community events like pie auctions and trivia nights. Community members provided labor and materials at a discount or no charge, including donations of floorboards and slate chalkboards from three nearby schools, two of which had been demolished. Restoration of Forest Grove School No. 5 was completed in 2019. The schoolhouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Forest Grove School No. 5 is located at 24040 Forest Grove Dr., Bettendorf, Iowa and is open for public tours during the summer, or by appointment.
“Resurrecting Forest Grove” was partially funded by grants from Humanities Iowa, a state-based affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Moline Foundation, Silos and Smokestacks National Heritage Area and Preservation Iowa.
Fourth Wall Films is a four-time regional Emmy award-winning independent media production company formerly located in Los Angeles, and now based in Moline, Illinois.
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Joe Reina has published a new novel, "Shadows over Scottsdale: An Unsolved Murder Mystery," built around a scenario true-crime statistics make uncomfortably familiar: a man commits a devastating crime and simply disappears, leaving investigators and a grieving community with no resolution.
The book follows a character named Robert, who flees the country using forged documents and a cargo ship after an act of destruction that leaves behind, as the publisher describes it, charred remains and an unanswered investigation. The case goes cold. The novel, according to its publisher, is less concerned with the mechanics of the escape than with what happens afterward, to the people left waiting for answers that never come.
Reina, now retired in Scottsdale, spent decades in international business across apparel, footwear, and real estate, with extensive time in Europe and a particular connection to Italy that shaped two earlier books, "The Goat Sleeps in the Kitchen" and "A Love Affair in Tuscany." "Shadows over Scottsdale" marks a different direction, built instead around the real scale of unsolved homicide in the U.S. The publisher’s materials cite roughly 346,000 unsolved homicides since 1965, with more than a dozen occurring unresolved each day. Separate reporting on the book has cited a figure of about 7,778 murders in 2023 alone, which it similarly frames as more than a dozen a day going unresolved.
"Writing ‘Shadows over Scottsdale’ forced me to confront uncomfortable questions about justice itself," Reina said, according to the announcement. "Too many crimes go unsolved, too many families wait endlessly for answers. I wanted readers to understand that behind every cold case statistic is a real story, real suffering, and real questions that may never be answered."
The publisher positions the novel as an examination of institutional limits as much as a crime story: the toll of a case gone cold on the people who can’t move past it, and what it means for a community when accountability simply never arrives.
"Shadows over Scottsdale" is published by Covenant Books and is available in paperback and hardcover through the publisher’s website and major retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.
Cold-case statistics tend to get cited and then forgotten. Studio CarryOnHarry is curious whether fiction built directly around that number does more to stick with a reader than the number alone ever does.
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Reina comes to this material from outside the art world. His career was built in apparel, footwear, and real estate development in Chicago, and the publisher’s materials trace his interest in European history, and in Italy specifically, to years of international business travel. He has published several previous books, including "The Goat Sleeps in the Kitchen," "A Love Affair in Tuscany," and "Shadows over Scottsdale," before turning to this account of a fictionalized moment at the hinge of the Renaissance.
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Studio CarryOnHarry is intrigued by novels that build fiction around real historical figures at a specific, dramatized turning point rather than attempting straight biography — the approach succeeds or fails based on how seamlessly the fictional moment integrates with documented historical fact.
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