Into the Unknown

AUTHOR'S NOTE

As devoted readers of the popular Wilderness series are aware, most of the stories in the saga are based on Nate King’s journal. His daughter started a diary in her teen years, and that too has been used. Nate’s wife also kept a record, but she wrote the least of the three.

None were day-by-day accounts. The Kings only wrote when the whim moved them. Nate, when something had an impact on his family. Evelyn, when events stirred her emotions or simply to record her thoughts. There is no rhyme or reason to Winona’s account.

Other sources have included the journals and diaries of settlers, mountain men and explorers. Wilderness #41: By Duty Bound, for instance, was based on the journal of Lieutenant Phillip J. Pickforth.

The author brings all this up because the book you hold in your hands is based on Robert Parker’s account of his travels and experiences. A contemporary of John James Audubon, Parker was a naturalist and a painter. His renderings of wildlife, the wilderness, and the Native Americans and white men who inhabited it, are authentic and stunning.

Parker’s work is so well known that it needs no introduction. And, too, our story is concerned with only a short interval in his exploration of the West, namely, the month or so he spent with the Kings and the McNairs.

Purists, I trust, will understand why the excerpts early on are abbreviated. The main focus of this story is the King family and their friends.