Phil Pfuehler, a retired River Falls Journal editor and long-time area resident, recently wrote “Breathing Pages,” a fictional novel about the fading of traditional media outlets and the consumption of media through devices.
Pfuehler was the River Falls Journal’s editor for 27 years, living in the city from 1990-2017. He met his wife, Kim, in college at UW-Eau Claire and has spent time living and working in both Eau Claire and Minneapolis.
For most of his adult life, Pfuehler has been interested in writing a novel, jotting down notes, putting together short stories, creating poems and building fragments of a novel. The novel is a trilogy of stories that are thematically linked into one novel.
Pfuehler said he wanted to write a novel that was relevant to his life. After decades working at a newspaper, books and technology felt like a topic to tackle.
“The novel is also about declining literacy and features mobs of people, the unread, who comport themselves like zombies and roam the streets aimlessly, hypnotized by phones that they never let go of or look away from,” Pfuehler said.
