Arts
"Searching For Jimmy Page" isn't merely the title of Christy Hallberg's debut novel. It was an obsession that once compelled Hallberg to hatch a wild plan to meet the Led Zeppelin guitarist. In 2005, Hallberg learned that Page and Brian May of Queen were to judge a guitar competition in London. Hallberg flew there and worked her way backstage at the Hammersmith Palais, armed with an envelope that included a personal letter, a photo she hoped he would autograph and part of the book she had started as her Master's Degree writing thesis. "All I could do was chase him and I stopped him at the top of the stairway and just screamed the only thing that came to mind: 'Jimmy, I came all the way from America just to meet you,'" she recalled. "It's not my most dignified moment, but there you go." Over the subsequent years, Hallberg crafted that quest into the spine of what became her book. Her central character takes the same flight to the same competition in "Searching For Jimmy Page."