Neighborhood Authors Celebrate Book Releases

By The Denver North Star staff

Congratulations to two North Denver authors whose books were recently published. 

“Top 3 Fix” by Rick Olderman

When The Denver North Star last caught up with Rick Olderman in 2022, he had sold his physical therapy clinic in North Denver and was adding a raft of new skills to his 25 years in the profession. He focused his work on helping people with chronic pain issues, and he took up what he described to columnist Kathryn White—a bit cryptically at the time—new forms of writing.

In January 2024, Olderman released “Top 3 Fix: Bob and Brad’s (and Rick’s) 3 Most Effective Exercises To Solve Pain from Headaches to Plantar Fasciitis.” The book came out of a partnership between Olderman and Robert Schrupp of the popular YouTube channel “Bob & Brad.” The channel has amassed over 5 million subscribers for its physical therapy tips and advice.

Olderman appeared live online with “Bob & Brad” for a session focused on lower body and back pain, and Olderman’s own YouTube channel at @RickOldermanPT is also quite active. 

Olderman is hard at work on his next book, which he expects to publish later this year. You can find him at www.rickolderman.com.

“The Joy Divisions” by Scott Dimovitz

Regis University English professor Scott Dimovitz’s first novel, “The Joy Divisions,” came out in November. Through his characters, Dimovitz delves deeply into the early 1990s world of Allentown, Pennsylvania, connecting local circumstances and developments with national events like the first World Trade Center bombing, the siege at the Branch Davidian Waco compound and the passage of NAFTA.

“I was initially inspired by events that happened in my young adulthood, when the textile factory where my father worked suddenly closed its doors after over 100 years, upending their entire local world,” Dimovitz said on the Regis University website in November. 

“I also wanted to depict a vibrant working-class culture,” Dimovitz added, “which often gets stereotyped as a bunch of unintellectual hillbillies rather than as individuals with their own complex interests and passions.”

The book is dense with micro-histories and commentaries told from the vantage points of characters ranging from an artsy college drop-out to devoted union members to the seriously religious. Not to mention a mysterious visitor to town with an unsettlingly hidden agenda. 

The book provides clever plot twists along its way to informing and reflecting on history, before a wholly unexpected ending begins unfolding in the book’s final chapters.

Dimovitz published an academic study on British postmodern feminist novelist Angela Carter in 2016 and is now working on two more books: “(Post)Apocalypse Now! Postmodern Literature at the End of Time” and a novel, which will again connect in-depth local history with broader sociopolitical themes. This time, Dimovitz will focus on Denver, where he has lived since 2008.

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