a kind of milestone for me, two books published in the same month. the first was my novel, an enormous occasion in my mind, as i'd been trying to finish a novel for forty-some years. this second one is the third in a series of non-fiction books about my family (see post below this); it's called Pioneer Leveretts & the 1600-mile journey; and it pulls together everything i know about a family legend (true) of a 1600-mile stagecoach trip from maine to illinois.

the more you read about the early 1800's, the more you realize this is just how they lived back then. they were proud of these two horses that got them all the way, all 1600 miles. on their stagecoach they had literally everything they owned: cookstove, spinning wheel, tools, cooking implements, enough beds for mother, father, and three boys 5, 4 and 2. that four-year-old was my great great grandfather. the two horses, so faithful 1600 miles faithful, died soon after arriving in quincy. for one thing, it was an illinois winter. also, there was a cholera epidemic that took 6% of quincy in that very year.

so i had a lot of fun finding the facts, and as in all of these books, i don't consider myself done yet. i'm done enough to get it out there and see how people feel. but all three books - and i now know it will be six or seven before it's finished - are unfinished, really. getting them up on amazon is a way of getting them off of my hands.

and off of my computers, which keep breaking and failing, and / or being needed by family members.