Professional wrestler, football player, actor, producer, and writer Pepper Martin will be at Flintridge Bookstore & Coffeehouse for a discussion and signing of his memoir Shrapnel of the Soul and Redemption. He will be joined by co-author and publicist Penny Lane.
A self-made man with little formal education, Martin’s book is a deeply personal reflection on a life marked by violence, controversy, physical pain, emotional suffering, and ultimately peace found through family and religious awakening. Within the pages of Shrapnel of the Soul and Redemption, he describes his childhood as the son of a bootlegger, life on the road as a professional athlete, the many women who crossed his path, the stars he befriended, his ties to organized crime both in the United States and Asia, and also the joys of being a husband, father, grandfather, and person of faith.
Martin began his life’s work as a professional wrestler in the early 1950s, having a sports career that spanned twenty years in the United States and Japan. Later, he became a successful actor, appearing in Walking Tall (1973), The Longest Yard (1974), and Scream (1981). A working actor with 38 films and hundreds of TV shows to his credit, Martin is probably best known for his role as the truck driver, Rocky, who beat up the man of steel in the 1981 movie Superman II.
