The Bottom of the Sky

B orn in a rural Montana coal and cow town, William C. (Bill) Pack grew up in an environment beset with all of the attendant difficulties. At 15 years old the courts emancipated him. At 16 he dropped out of high school. At 17 he married and at 18 he became a father. He worked variously as a truck driver, bartender, fry cook, and advertising salesman. When he was 21 he began a successful career as a broker with Merrill Lynch in Billings, Montana. A few years later he was divorced and broke. With his brokerage license and GED, Bill transferred to Northern California where he rose to become the youngest Executive VP/Divisional Director at Smith Barney Shearson (later, Citigroup Smith Barney). His business and financial acumen became renowned. Bill ran a division managing many billions of dollars and met regularly with past and current chief executives of the largest financial firms in the world. He spoke to thousands of investment professionals and investors, shared podiums with CEOs, a presidential chief economic adviser, a governor, the executive director of the California Treasury’s Debt Advisory Commission, and many other notables. Bill served a prestigious three-year appointment with the NASD (now FINRA), the S.E.C.’s partner in regulating Wall Street. Along the way, through Menttium 100, Bill volunteered as a mentor for female executives at both Hewlett Packard and JPMorgan. He has worked at and financially supported many charities, most particularly women’s and children’s advocacy groups. When Bill became seriously ill at 43, he quit the financial world to pursue lifelong goals. He took the SAT college entrance exams and earned acceptance into Stanford University where he became Stanford’s lone undergraduate director for an archaeological project. He won the Annual Reviews Prize in Anthropological Sciences for his thesis and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. During college, Bill published a poem, and shortly afterward, his first short story. The Bottom of the Sky is his first novel. Bill Pack is married with four grown children. When he’s not in Montana, he lives in Northern California. In addition to working on his next novel, he is a member of the Board of Directors for the Institute of the Americas. iamericas.org