Great Son [antikvár]

Introduction rp Ihis book should have been a trilogy. Certainly it was intended as a tome, at least. But sometimes the vast dimensions of a people or a region prove so unsurmountable that a writer, in bafflement or defiance or defeat, decides to attack with a slingshot instead of a more proportionate and formidable weapon. No book, to my knowledge at least, has been written that encompasses the majestic background or the amazing people that form the story of America's Northwest. That which has been written has, for the most part, taken the form of history. But people are history. In writing a story whose background is the city of Seattle the difficulty is that the human chronicle is so romantic, so improbable, so fantastic, and, at the same time, so touching that the would-be writer reels. One of those 1,800-page romances might have accomplished it—the awesome and bulky type of volume that is so tough on the stomach muscles when read in bed— with a map in the front and an index in the back, and footnotes explaining the meaning of Chinook Indian words. There are certain American historical events too fabulous for fiction. Anyone who dips into the colorful record that is Seattle's past must thumb old newspapers, records, maps, 7