Introduction

ANOTHER THUNDER MOUNTAIN NOVEL

 

 

I can’t begin to say how happy I am about having another Thunder Mountain novel in this issue. I love the series and the entire idea of being able to go back into other timelines and live in the Old West.

Some of you might know that my family members, on both sides, were pioneers into Idaho. And my grandparents on the Smith side worked in old mining towns, some of which I write about.

My grandfather worked in the mines, my grandmother cooked for the miners. And when a mine shut down, they moved on to another mining town. Some of the stories I heard from my grandparents when I was young were amazing.

And in the 1950s, when I was old enough to remember, they even showed me some of the towns and places. It was magical for a young kid.

It was their stories and those trips with them into the wilderness that gave me my intense interest in the Old West.

As an adult, I also tried to spend some time in the area I write about now. I have been in the Thunder Mountain region three times and it really is the most remote, rugged, and inaccessible area in the lower 48 states. It is designated a primitive area and only accessible by walking or horse.

I even have a story of being airlifted out of the area on my last try going in there. (I only tell the story in person. Much sadder and funnier that way.)

After seeing the area my grandparents worked and lived, I have a massive amount of respect for them and what they managed to survive.

And for all the pioneers in the Old West.

So writing about the area and the wonderful pioneers who lived there is wonderful fun for me. I sure hope you enjoy this new Thunder Mountain story.

I have another story set in the same region in this issue. It is called “Growing Pains of the Dead” and is set on the very trail and in the valley where I have set a number of Thunder Mountain novels. But from a very different perspective.

Next month a new novel serial will start in these pages. Actually not a newly written novel, but my first novel published in 1988 from Warner Books. It is also set in the same mountains, in the same valley as Thunder Mountain is set, but again with a very, very different perspective.

It is clear that even thirty plus years ago, my interest was in writing about the Thunder Mountain region in the Idaho Primitive Area.

There is just something about that remote valley with an old mining town on the bottom of a lake that can catch an imagination.

And the lodge on the top of the Monumental Summit that no one can find the remains of. I only know it even actually existed by reading newspapers from that time that advertised the lodge.

The novel in this book only visits the lodge at the top of Monumental Summit above the Thunder Mountain Valley, but the idea of remoteness and inaccessibility of the entire area comes through in this book just fine.

And when you get to the point in the novel where the characters are crossing a rock slope, I hope I portrayed the terror through the characters that I felt when I had to cross one of those.

Enjoy.

—Dean Wesley Smith

December 15th, 2015