Riding home from a band contest in junior high and finding myself without a Louis L’Amour book to read, I invented an extended family. This family later came to include several surnames, give rise to multiple characters who have recently been brought out of moth balls to inhabit their own stories, and even featured a detailed family tree. My mom is a genealogist—finding a large piece of paper on which to concoct a family was no problem at our house.

Thus were born the Stondts. The first novel I ever wrote was compiled on lined notebook paper with a ballpoint pen. It is long gone, but it detailed the two brothers from the Alsace-Lorraine region who boarded a ship with their mother and several siblings and fled political persecution for their father’s rebellious activities. The boys were the only two members of the family to survive the journey to America. They were separated on the dock only to find each other ten years later, one having just left his adopted farm family, and the other having just committed a murder for hire. They ended up in Whispering Pines, Wyoming. The elder brother, the one-time killer, preferred to speak German, though he was also conversant in French. He would later expect of his children (and grandchildren) that they be fluent in both languages along with English. The younger brother, who had spoken only French since arriving in Eastern Iowa with a farm family of French immigrants, married a local Arapaho girl. One of their great-grandchildren appeared in not Quite Forgotten. His name is Billy Ben Sky.

Also featured in not Quite Forgotten are several great-grandchildren of the elder brother. One of the Stondt lines included eleven children, ten boys and a daughter. The youngest three sons served in Vietnam, all pilots: Devon (the “gazillionaire”) and the twins Calvin and Kevin. Devon is mentioned in several of my books.

Another of the original children of the elder Stondt brother was a woman who married a Welshman named Weller. Their grandson is Zeb Weller. Invariably, my readers will name Buster McCann or Zeb Weller as their favorite character. For a little extra flavor, Zeb’s dad is not only second-generation American, but his mother is from Wales. Therefore, he is fluent not only in English, German, and French, but also Welsh.

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