Author Gail Prout discusses thriller

Ramona Woman’s Club started the New Year with Ramona author Gail Prout, who wrote “The God Program,” a high-tech industrial espionage thriller about a programmer who designs security applications.

Heavy rain on Jan. 7, the day the club met, kept some of the members from attending, but those who did thoroughly enjoyed Prout’s talk, said first vice president Wendy Wygant.

The protagonist in Prout’s book goes to Washington, D.C., to collaborate with a group of government agents on a project. He discovers his conscience will not allow him to complete the assignment, and he flees with a company-owned laptop that is essential to the operation.

Prout, a New Jersey native, taught high school math, biology, chemistry and physics after earning a bachelor’s degree in mathematics education at Monmouth College in West Long Branch, N.J. She also taught seventh- and eighth-grade math and science, and all subjects for sixth and seventh grades.

She earned her master’s degree in science education in 2003, and moved with her mother to Ramona in 2005. She said she started to imagine stories while she was in graduate school, and a friend encouraged her to join the Ramona Christian Writers Group.

She began writing “The God Program” in 2007 and completed it in 2013.

Ramona Woman’s Club meets the first Thursday of each month at 1 p.m. in its building at 524 Main St. Each meeting features a guest speaker. The speaker on Feb. 4 will be Darrel McKenzie, who will lead a talk titled “Diamonds are Forever.”

Among the club’s special interest groups that meet each month are Literary, Bridge and Ladybugs.

The club holds scholarship fundraisers for Ramona students throughout the year. Its annual tea and fashion show will be held on April 14. For more information about the club and its activities, contact club president Betty Shaw at 760-789-4515.