Welcome

BACKGROUND

Why would I write a novel set in an Idaho gold camp of the 1870s? Well, in the first place, I find history truly interesting. It's about real people facing actual problems and blundering through, sometimes magnificently. The winners and losers vary from epic stature to mere footnotes. They are people we can sympathize with and learn from. As for the history of the American West, it's fairly recent and accessible. The ghost towns are there, as are rutted wagon roads, old gold mines, forts, and descendants of the Indian tribes who tried to defend against overwhelming odds. Also, my father had a small collection of Indian arrowheads and a large collection of guns of all kinds. I find these things very thought-provoking. To handle them is to feel a kinship with the people who made them and depended on them.

Gold itself has a fascinating history. Immensely valued by Europeans as a store of wealth, the Indians of North & South America saw it as a curiosity or just something useful for ornaments. This was one of the many cultural differences between Europeans and Indians, but it was the one that accelerated the rapid invasion of many Indian lands by white people.

Thirsty started as a few short stories intended for magazines. I soon realized that the magazine market for such short stories was practically nonexistent. (At least, that's what the rejection slips seemed to be telling me.) So, I decided to merge and expand them into a book of episodes taking place in a western gold camp named Thirsty.

The completed manuscript got 35 rejections before Sara Ann Freed (then an editor with Walker And Company) accepted it. Sara was also kind enough to enter the book for the Medicine Pipe Award of the Western Writers of America. It won as the best western novel by a new western writer in 1984, and I've enjoyed maintaining my WWA membership ever since.

Thirsty has been a sort of cat of nine lives. One chapter was cut from the original manuscript by Walker And Company, and later appeared as a short story, A Hundred Pounds Of Gold, in New Frontiers, Volume II, published as a Tor Western in 1990. A recipe for "faux Venison" based on an episode in Thirsty, appeared in Bob Wiseman's book of western recipes, Buckskin, Bullets, and Beans, published by Northland Publishing in 1997. A large print reprint was published by G. K. Hall & Co. in 1999 (ISBN 0-7838-8810-4), thanks to Hazel Rumney of G.K. Hall. (The dust jacket photo, by Robert Darby, is an excellent study of the building style in the time setting of Thirsty.) And Gary Challender's Books In Motion released the audio version (cassette/CD) of Thirsty in April, 2003.

The audio version is retitled, "Sundown In Thirsty," which was an excellent idea, even if it wasn't mine. The reading and voice characterizations by Jerry Sciarrio are very well done, as is the cover art by James Hatzell. It is conveniently packaged as 6 cassette tapes (ISBN 1-58116-658-3) or 8 CDs (ISBN 1-58116-659-1) If you're faced with some boring driving, this is the entertainment you need to take along.

Giving credit where due is good for the soul, so I'll admit that I may not have encountered the opportunities for these add-ons and spin-offs without having attended many of the yearly WWA conventions.

With Thirsty, I'll limit the excerpts shown here to the Prologue that sets the stage for the book. As with all of these excerpts, you may print one copy if you like, but I do invoke the copyright against multiple copies or distribution.

THIRSTY

Prologue

There ain't no ghost town out in Idaho sadder than what's left of Thirsty. Nobody grew old there because it didn't last that long. Thirsty didn't go much according to eastern laws and had no tradition to live up to. Common sense, horse sense: that was the law in Thirsty.

A sort of western Camelot it was. Dull, unimaginative people, the cowardly and the timid - they never made it as far west as Thirsty.

Thirsty hit its golden age in that last year before it all ended. People like Downwind, Doc Crane, Lillian Hoffman, Sam Ibsen, Sheriffs Johnson and Jones, Shifty, the Dutchman, Hammerin' Harry, Frypan, Chief Many Tongues, and Reverend John - they were all special. And when they left Thirsty, they were like dandelion seeds scattering all over the West, planting little pieces of Thirsty a hundred times over.

Thirsty was a gold-mining town. The men who came there were thirsty for gold and all it could buy. And most of 'em had a special thirst for the stuff the Thirsty Saloon had to offer. But that wasn't how the town got its name. The first gold found in the area was kicked up by old Pete Olsen's mule, Thirsty. Pete was one to give credit where due, and he named the place for his mule.

When Grandpa was very old and I was in my prime, we drove a battered truck as far as we could go on what was left of the road out to the place where Crystal Creek flowed out of a broad valley west of the Bitterroot Mountains. We had to walk the last mile, but Grandpa set quite a pace in his eagerness to stand once again where the town of Thirsty had been.

I stood there with him, gazing at the empty, weathered row of buildings that lined both sides of the main street.

The Thirsty Saloon, at three stories the tallest building in town, still had all of its porch bannisters and most of its gingerbread intact. Momma Rose's place, a squat, rambling, two-story wooden monster, crouched at the bend where the street curved to follow the bench of level land between Crystal Creek and the hills above it. A wide two-story building across from the Thirsty Saloon had a simple sign above the door saying "Food." It had to be the Dutchman's place. Next to it, the modest building with the front door missing, had to be Doc Crane's place. And we had passed a small church, a blacksmith shop, and a livery stable on our way up the street. Grandpa had known Thirsty when it was alive, and I knew it from years of hearing Grandpa speak of it.

Standing there in the weed-grown main street of Thirsty, I saw that Grandpa was lost in memories, and I could no more intrude on his thoughts than I'd interrupt a man at prayer. So I fell to thinking about all those wonderful days in Thirsty that Grandpa spoke of. I could see the place as Grandpa was seeing it, alive and full of the people he'd known there. I sat down on the porch of the Thirsty Saloon and imagined I could see Hank Jones riding into Thirsty for the first time.

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