Many people helped with the creation of Deep River. I would foremost like to thank my secret-weapon editor and cheerleader, my wife, Anne.
I am blessed to have my publisher, Grove Atlantic, and my enormously skilled editors, Morgan Entrekin, Allison Malecha, Brenna McDuffie, Susan Gamer, and Paula Cooper Hughes. Risto Penttilä, Anders Eklund, and Marcus Prest furnished much-appreciated comment on the parts set in Finland. My gratitude to Bryan Penttila and George Nelson for their help on early logging, Eric Erickson for early sawmilling, and Reverend Gregory Neitzel and John and Jerry Alto for help with Columbia River gillnetting. I am particularly grateful for the many hours I spent with the late Rae Cheney talking about her childhood on a Montana farm in the 1920s. Further thanks to Marie Cooley of Fitting Room Corsets in Seattle for her advice on period fashion, and Sarah and Gabriel Chrisman for inviting me into their Victorian home in Port Townsend and sharing their thoughts on daily life at the turn of the twentieth century. Karl VanDevender boosted my spirits with early and constant encouragement. Karl, Josh Nogar, and Bo Sheller provided medical advice.
Many friends read drafts and provided helpful feedback. I would particularly like to thank Ed Grosswiler and LuAnn Lange for their early careful reading and detailed commentary. I would also like to thank Peter and Treacy Coates, Katherine Fitch, Mike Harreschou, Vicki Huff, Helen Odom, and Ken Pallack. My warm thanks to Cheri Lerma, of Cheri’s Cafe in Cannon Beach, Oregon, for putting up with me when I was writing in a full booth during busy times while only ordering coffee.
My thanks to Sloan Harris and Heather Karpas at International Creative Management for constant encouragement and advice, both literary and business, and finally, my assistant, Halley Johnson, and Alexa Brahme at ICM for their much-appreciated support.
I want to acknowledge my great debt to and my gratitude for my grandparents, Axel and Aina Silverberg and Leif Erickson, as well as my great-uncles and great-aunts, all immigrants to the Lower Columbia region. They were loggers, fishermen, farmers, cannery workers, and hardworking and loving wives and mothers. I learned much working beside them in my childhood. I only wish I’d appreciated it back then as I do now.