Wabete

About the Book

It is a land of turbulence and intrigue, yet inundated with tranquility and serenity, of majestic hills and sterile deserts, of grassy plains and forests thick with trees. A land teaming with wildlife, with skies darkened by endless flights of birds, and with streams and rivers and mighty lakes of pure freshwater. It is where the Spanish soldiers of fortune force themselves upon the native peoples in search of gold. Where French explorers push into the interior on the water highways. Men like Cadillac, Cartier, Champlain, LaSalle, and Marquette spread their cultural influence on the many peoples of the land. Where Swedes, English, Dutch, Portuguese, and other Europeans seek to extract the wealth of the bountiful land. Caught between these powers is a population of diverse societies—some with strong social structures and laws, and many facing external pressures with which they cannot cope, ancient peoples who called this land their home for many, many years. The Five Nations of Iroquois exist with a truly representative form of government, unwritten rules that guide their everyday lives and affect all neighboring peoples and a completely volunteer military that enforces council decisions.

About the Author

I entered the world in 1937 as the third child of seven in the automotive capital of Detroit, during the closing years of the Great Depression. After spending thirty-five years employed in that industry, it was capped off as the vice president of a robotics, tooling, and engineering company in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. I’ve been married to my beautiful wife, Barbara, for thirty-seven years. Like my parents and their parents, I became the father of seven children. After twenty-three years in the west, including nine in Idaho, we returned to Michigan. Our children are scattered in Colorado, Michigan, and Alaska. I always yearned to be a writer but never found the time until we relocated to the beautiful Sedona, Arizona, area in June of 1990. Now with nothing to do but chase the little ball around on the golf course, I took to writing. Traveling around forty-nine of the fifty states and most of the Canadian provinces opened my mind to the wonders of the many different peoples and ways of living. These, and authors like James Michener, Alan Eckert Kenneth Roberts, Tony Hillerman, and others, became my inspiration to dream and invent stories.