IAN HAMET posted
some
kind words about us over on his blog,
Banana Oil, for which I’m grateful, but
I’m calling attention to it mostly because of a comment he makes about the book
Law for the Elephant:

Then, today, he posted a piece about a book that sounds like
a goldmine of background info (speaking as a writer),
Law for the Elephant by John Phillip Reid. According to Will,
it’s a dry, dusty history of the California and Oregon Trails. Research
Research Research!!!

And he’s absolutely right. I don’t know that I’ll ever sell a novel, but
I’ve written a couple, and started on a couple more, and one day perhaps
I’ll want to write a novel that involves the Gold Rush–or some
science-fiction/fantasy analog of it. Perhaps I won’t. But either way,
Reid’s book is a treasure-trove of detail about the emigrants, all drawn
from original sources. Being a legal history much concerned
with the emigrant’s views on property rights, it by no means gives a
complete or balanced account–but on the other hand it includes many
details you simply wouldn’t find in a more conventional history.

I’ve started reading a more recent sequel, Policing the Elephant;
I’ll have more on that when I finish it, which will be at some point in
the indefinite future. Interesting, it is; gripping it ain’t.