The book Wespro, Oregon, and the Cord in the Kitchen is about a teenager who finds himself living in a small village as a foster child and how the small village keeps him from going to a reform school and prepares him to be an adult. Manlio B. Valente is a 1972 graduate of the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington; he is a retired Middle School teacher, and he is an avid long-distance bicycle rider. His longest road trip from Seattle, Washington, to San Jose, California, when he was thirty-six years old, and he is a private pilot, his longest cross-country flight took him from San Jose, California, to a grass strip near Coos Bay, Oregon. He lives in Sun City, Arizona.