Outdoors author with Charles City ties pens book about bowhunting adventures

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Is there an outdoors enthusiast in your life who likes to read about the outdoors when he or she isn’t enjoying it in person?

Here’s an idea for a late Christmas gift — the book “Crimson Arrows: A Bowhunting Odyssey,” written by Eyad Yehyawi.

You’d even be shopping local, kind of, as Yehyawi is the husband of Melinda (Schwarz) Yehyawi, who graduated as valedictorian of the Charles City High School class of 1997. Melinda was very active in music, drama and cheerleading in Charles City.

She and her husband are raising two young boys, ages 9 and 5, in Cedar Rapids, where she works as a physician assistant in the Mercy system and her husband is an optometrist. The couple recently celebrated their 10th anniversary.

“When I met her, I thought she was one of the kindest people I’d ever met,” he said. “Obviously I thought she was beautiful as well. We had a lot in common. We started seeing each other and the rest is history.”

Yehyawi, an avid outdoorsman, was born and raised in Keokuk, and said that whenever he visits his in-laws in Charles City, the town reminds him of his old stomping grounds.

Yehyawi has been bowhunting for nearly 30 years, traveling across the United States, Canada and Africa. Growing up in southeast Iowa, he gained an appreciation and respect for the outdoors at an early age.

“Ever since I was little, I recall always wanting to be outside,” he said. “I begged my parents to take me outside hiking and fishing.”

Although Yehyawi was influenced by a grandfather who was an outdoorsman, his immediate family was not really an “outdoors family.”

“My best friend growing up lived out in the country,” Yehyawi said. “He and his father were kind enough to take me under their wing and let me go fishing and eventually hunting with them.”

Yehyawi said that having encouragement from those two was crucial in feeding his interest in the outdoors. He started writing in about 2007, when he submitted some articles to outdoors magazines and other publications.

“I always tried to weave in life lessons in my outdoors stories,” he said. “The outdoors taught me about humility and hard work, getting past setbacks, the feeling of success.”

Yehyawi said his book is a collection of life lessons, seen through the lens of the outdoors. Spanning three decades of his adventures, the stories within “Crimson Arrows” take the reader through the emotions, heartbreaks, and successes from Yehyawi’s earliest years in Iowa, to physically and psychologically challenging backcountry hunts in Alaska and Canada, to a breathtaking African safari.

Through the 32 stories, Eyad defines his passion for the outdoors, including the disappointments and mishaps, sleepless nights and tears, and a few instances where death comes calling.

Yehyawi said that the his primary motivation for putting together a book was to have something available for his children to see and learn more about him.

“I really wanted them to understand why I did this stuff, if something were to happen to me,” he said. “If all they have are pictures and trophies, they’ll really have no idea about what it really meant to me.”

Yehyawi said he wanted his children to understand what motivated him to hunt, whether or not they decided to follow his footsteps to the outdoors.

“I wanted to convey how important hunting and the outdoors are to my life,” he said.

A near tragedy also played a big role in Yehyawi’s decision to further pursue the outdoors and begin his writing. In June of 2005, when he was finishing his residency at a VA medical center in St. Louis, he suffered a severe stroke — at age 28.

“I couldn’t believe it when they told me I’d had a stroke,” he said. “I remember being angry, and being in denial and thinking this could not be happening at my age.”

Yehyawi said that he remembers thinking that, if he survived, he would probably never be able to hunt again — among many other things he had taken for granted.

“I couldn’t walk well, so climbing a tree stand or just walking across a field seemed impossible,” he said. “I thought it was over.”

Yehyawi said he took a long time to recover, but when he did, he vowed to himself that he wouldn’t put off his dreams any longer, and he would no longer put off all the things he wanted to do.

Yehyawi said he still has some side-effects from the stroke, but he said there were positive effects as well.

“I can relate better to many of my patients, because I have a better idea of what they’re going through,” he said. “It’s also made me appreciative of what you can accomplish if you put your mind to it.”

The book is available at the website crimsonarrowsmedia.com, and has also been available on Amazon. Yehyawi said that the audio version of the book is also selling well.

The book is also currently available for purchase at Ace Hardware in Charles City, the workplace of Yehyawi’s father-in-law, Russ Schwarz.