Writing may be a solitary occupation, but each book depends not only on the author’s imagination, but also on the help and goodwill of other people. I want to thank my agent, George Nicholson, and my editor, David Gale, both for their confidence in me and for their sound writing advice.
Thanks to the members of my critique group for their unfailing support and their extreme patience in reading these chapters in their roughest form. And last, but certainly not least, thanks to my family. You are the foundation upon which I’m able to build my dreams, and the most important part of everything I do.
Readers always ask me whether the places and people in my novels are real. In the case of Riding the Flume, the setting bears a conscious and yet not-exact resemblance to the area west of Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks in California. Connorsville and St. Joseph are made-up towns, and Connor’s Basin is also an imaginary place. However, one of the longest lumber flumes ever built had its beginning point in Millwood, California, a town that no longer exists but that used to lie northwest of what is now Kings Canyon National Park. This flume carried lumber out of the mountains down to Sanger, a small town east of Fresno, California. It was fifty-four miles long, twenty miles longer than the lumber flume I’ve created for Riding the Flume, but not as dangerous to ride. As for the people, no character in this book bears any intentional resemblance to any real person, living or dead.