Themes + Backdrop to the Novels

Notes from the author

• Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr Ripley, The Price of Salt); Ross MacDonald (The Zebra Striped Hearse, The Underground Man); Charles Willeford (Kiss Your Ass Goodbye); and Penelope Lively (The Photograph)—these are the mentors whose books I keep close at hand.

• A deeper dive into why Safe Harbor for the Dead, which takes place in the 1980’s, has immediate relevance to what’s going on today. The precursor to MAGA came into being as the Moral Majority and was used to leverage Ronald Reagan’s campaign. The anti-Equal Rights Amendment bullhorn for that campaign, Phyllis Schlafly, voted for Donald Trump in 2016, just before she died.

• Civil rights for immigrants is a big deal. My maternal grandparents escaped pogroms in Czarist controlled Ukraine and immigrated to the USA. They wouldn’t have comprehended the term, “illegal alien,” and, if alive today, would be shocked how our government treats immigrants.

• Immigration has never been a problem in the US; rather it has always been a boon to the socio-economic-political well being of our society. With one obvious—and glaring—exception: European colonists invading and displacing Native Tribal Nations. And, the way to remedy that exception is to give back to nature at least 1/3 of each and every state and have that managed by North America’s original stewards, Native Tribal Nations.