Richard D. Hayes was born in 1939 and raised in Arlington, Massachusetts. He attended school there until leaving for Boston College High School and then Boston College. Through the ROTC program at BC, Richard served in the army, went airborne, and spent three years in Germany. Afterward, he attended Suffolk University in Boston, earning his Juris Doctor in 1968 and serving as an editor of the school’s law review. He went to work in Detroit for the National Labor Relations Board and later moved on to the NLRB headquarters in Washington, DC.

He married Maryanne O’Donnell in 1969, and they have four children and three grandchildren. Richard and Maryanne raised their family in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, where they moved in 1975 to practice labor and employment law in Springfield. He and Fred Sullivan formed their own firm in 1976, from which Richard retired in 2010. On retirement, he and his spouse moved to Hampstead, New Hampshire, where they now reside.

Richard received a number of Super Lawyer awards during his career, as well as listing on the Wall of Fame of the American Management Association. He spent much of his career representing local governments and schools in Massachusetts and Vermont, and he frequently appeared before the Massachusetts Labor Board, the courts, and the Commission Against Discrimination, representing management and administrators. As a small-business owner himself, and as a representative of both large and small employers, Hayes experienced the workings of Massachusetts courts, agencies, and politics in significant depth. This novel reflects his experience as well as his optimism about the opportunity for serious change.