"Dark Paradise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoag Tami)

AUTHOR’S NOTE

INSPIRATION comes from everywhere and from no-where, from life and from dreams and from places that have no names. It comes most often in small pieces as tiny and bright as diamonds. I catch them when I can and hold them tight. I wish on them like stars and from them come the seeds of stories.

This book is the result of many small inspirations that came to me over the course of time. I have a number of people to thank for those diamond lights. Mary W., for striking a spark half a decade ago. Mary-Chapin Carpenter and Shawn Colvin, songwriters whose gift for touching the soul with words continually leaves me in awe. Philip Aaberg, Montana-born pianist who can transport me west with a handful of tender notes and the exquisite silences between them. John Lyons, cowboy and teacher of wisdom and patience. Sarge, old friend long gone from all but my memory and my heart.

Also, thank you to fellow Bantam author and agency sister Fran Baker for your generous donation of information on the life of a court reporter. Thanks, Don Weisberg, for the Feed and Read. Thanks to C.B. and M.E.F. for your spirited bidding in support of MFW and my ego.

Readers, I hope you enjoy this trip to Montana. It is a place of unique and spectacular beauty, at once tough and fragile, timeless and threatened, as is the American West itself. It is a place where the incredible, boisterous spirit of the frontier can still be felt, and where it can be felt slipping away like sand through grasping fingers. To all who would fight to save that spirit-natives and outsiders alike-I wish you success.