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Greetings from Mary’s basement AKA office, conveniently located near the washer/dryer and the bathroom.
If I could only remember what happened last March that made me abandon updating the web site…But I can’t. I do know that I hurled myself into writing the next B & B, Loco Motive. It’s still not finished because Real Life keeps getting in the way.
Meanwhile, The Alpine Uproar makes its hardcover debut on June 23. Last year’s hardcover, The Alpine Traitor, came out at the end of March in paperback. The B & B paperback of Vi Agra Falls will be on the racks July28. There will be signings and such—look for them under the Appearances section.
On a memorable occasion many years ago, my family and I went to eat at a cafe on a Saturday night in a small logging town. We were seated in a rear booth next to the wall that separated the dining area from the bar. We could hear a big commotion next door and knew that there was a ruckus underway. Suddenly a fist crashed through the wall next to my father’s head. Dad was droll of wit and quick of thought. He calmly picked up his knife, put butter on it, smeared it on the hand, and went back to eating his dinner. Oh, yes—he’d worked in the mill at Alpine…
In recent months I’ve discovered that there are more and more people interested in seeking the real Alpine where many of my ancestors lived and worked for the Alpine Lumber Company (originally named the Nippon Lumber Company). When the timber parcel was logged out in the late ‘20’s, the town was evacuated and burned to the ground. Sounds harsh? Not really. When mill owner Carl Clemans finished harvesting the trees over a 20+-year period, there was no reason for the town’s existence.
Several years ago after I’d begun the series I learned that a group called The Iron Goat Trail was involved in the history of the Great Northern Railroad (Rocky the Mountain Goat was the company’s symbol). If any of you are railroad buffs or interested in Alpine’s history, I’ll post some sites in the Links section.
Naturally, I’ve been intrigued by this recent fascination with Alpine. No, I’m not taking any credit for it. And, being realistic (not to mention having bills to pay and food to eat), it may help book sales. (Yeah, yeah—I know, I’m a writer, I have too much imagination, and maybe it’s not selling more books—that “realistic” word just popped up again.) But the most interesting part of this search into the past is that there seems to be more awareness of our region’s history these days. That’s good. I’ve always felt that we can’t know where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been.
King County Library System Foundation: www.kcls.org
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The Alpine Uproar features The Icicle Creek Tavern (a locale I’ve used many times in the series), I based the watering hole on a real loggers’ tavern in a small logging community near Port Angeles WA where Dave and I lived for the first four years of our marriage. It was a notorious place for brawls, including one between the Hells Angels and the hometown loggers. The home team won handily. No surprise to those of us who grew up during timber’s heyday. Traditionally, loggers have been tough people who risk life and limb to do their job. The industry has changed drastically, but Seattle started out as a mill town, and timber was the foundation on which much of Western Washington was built.
There never was a road into Alpine. The only way to get there was via train or by climbing a mile uphill from Highway 2, one of the major east-west roads through Washington’s Cascade Mountain Range. The town was purposely burned to keep hoboes (we’re talking Great Depression era here) from moving in and setting more than just the houses on fire. 
