Читать книгу Summer of Fifty-Seven - Stephen C. Joseph - Страница 9

This is a work of imagination. It is also a work of experience. There is truth in the old saw that all fiction has significant autobiographical elements. There is also truth in the statement that all autobiography contains significant fictions. Thus, in this book, the conventional disclaimer about “resemblance to any persons living or dead” loses meaningful relevance.

There are many people whom I wish to thank. Jim Smith of Sunstone Press became a partner in this effort. Kent Carroll was extremely generous with advice and encouragement, when advice was plentiful, but encouragement very hard to come by. I am blessed that my wife, Beth Preble, is not only my muse, but also my clearest-eyed critic. My daughter and son-in-law, Denise and Peter Joseph-Martin, produced my wild buckaroo grandsons who are the proximate stimulus to putting this four-decades-old dream down on paper. The music of Woody Guthrie burned into my younger memory the relationship of song to story, and I thank the Woody Guthrie Foundation for keeping the song going. My best buddy, Typhoon, curled as a pup at my feet when I wrote my previous book. She performed the same service now again, in her twilight years.

And finally, I would like to thank the men and women of the US National Park Service and the US Forest Service, past, present, and future, for their dedication to conserving our most irreplaceable treasures.

Santa Fe, New Mexico

2002