Northwest Passage series

Otto von Bismarck once said, "Laws are like sausages — it’s better not to see them being made." The 19th‑century German statesman knew it is often best to focus on a finished product and not its construction.

The Northwest Passage series is my string of sausages. Cobbled together between 2012 and 2014, it is a collection of books only an author and perhaps understanding readers could truly appreciate.

When I wrote The Mine, my debut novel, I did not anticipate a second act. I expected to move on to the next item on my bucket list and leave writing behind. Then I got the notion to proceed. I wrote The Journey, a mostly unrelated story, and then The Show, the afterthought sequel to The Mine. By the time I finished The Fire and The Mirror, which continued the tales of the Smith and Johnson families, I had a hodgepodge on my hands.

The novels do have some things in common. Each is set in my native Pacific Northwest. Members of the Smith and Johnson clans mingle a few times. And Joel Smith appears in all five stories. Readers see Joel as a college student in The Mine, a toddler in The Journey, a young husband and father in The Show, a middle-aged professor in The Fire, and a grandfather in The Mirror. Cindy Smith, Joel's mother, is the only other character to appear in every book.

I broke down this series once before. On March 20, 2014, I answered common questions from readers. I won't do that today. Instead, I will try to answer uncommon questions and offer new information. With spoilers galore, here is my second examination of a splendid collection.

THE MINE (2012): Though The Mine is mostly set in Seattle, it begins in Helena, Montana, a town I know well. I moved my family to the storied gold-mining community in June 2000, barely two weeks after Joel Smith visited it in the novel. Unlike other settings in the book, I did not have to research this one. I lived in it, worked in it, and played in it.

Helena, as I wrote on July 4, 2014, is a special place, filled with Gilded Age mansions, quirky shops, and alpine scenery. I picked the city as a major setting because I wanted Joel and later Grace Vandenberg, his love interest, to see what I saw every day. I also wanted Joel's shocking transition from 2000 to 1941 to take place in a simpler, less hectic environment.

Joel, as readers know, handled the transition with aplomb, much to the chagrin of those who wanted him to grieve more about what he had left behind. Needless to say, I struggled with this. Though I wanted to present Joel as a disciplined problem solver, a man who did not easily break, I could have made him suffer more. Most people, suddenly torn from everything they have ever known, would not be able shake off crushing adversity so quickly and easily.

I faced other challenges, of course, including some I documented in The Mine's tenth anniversary post. After confronting the realities of crafting a novel, I added fifteen chapters to the first draft, changed story arcs, and updated props and attire. Aluminum foil became tin foil. Chocolate chip cookies became Tollhouse cookies. Grace's wardrobe on a trip to Mount Rainier was changed from a blouse and blue jeans to a dress.

I also changed the ending. In my first outline of The Mine, Grace reunited with Joel as an old woman, much like Jane Seymour with Christopher Reeves early in Somewhere in Time. After much thought, I decided to have them reunite in 2000 as young adults. A few critics dismissed the ending as a deus ex machina. I still consider it perfect.

Favorite Quote: In this Chapter 48 passage, a favorite among readers, Ginny Gillette tells Joel Smith that her best friend is worth pursuing.

"Grace may never be someone you can read or understand. She may never be someone anyone can understand. But she will always be worth the effort and the wait. Beneath that delicate exterior is a strong, resolute woman who does nothing halfway. Never take her for granted and never underestimate her. She will amaze."

THE JOURNEY (2012): My second book is something of an outlier. With 244 pages, sixty chapters, and two protagonists, it is by far my smallest work. It is also the only novel set in a fictional community.

Inspired by my high school years in the rodeo town of Pendleton, Oregon, The Journey was the first of my books to draw heavily on personal experience. In describing the carhop restaurants, drive-in theaters, school dances, classrooms, teenage customs, and even weekend nights "cruising the gut." I needed only to consult my memories and yearbooks.

The Journey was also the first of two books that introduced older characters to their younger selves and the first of seven set at least partially in an American high school. It tells the tale of Michelle Preston Richardson, a 48-year-old widow who is rudely propelled back in time to her senior year of 1979-80.

It also tells the tale of three major events that dominated news cycles that year: the Iran hostage crisis, the Miracle on Ice, and the May 18, 1980, eruption of Mount St. Helens. As an 18-year-old living in Oregon, I vividly remember all three events, particularly the eruption, which hampered the Northwest for months and affected how residents lived, worked, traveled, and, in my case, fared in a track and field meet.

On May 19, the day after the eruption, my high school hosted an invitational for the also-rans who failed to qualify for district. As usual, I ran the 1500 meters. As usual, I ran fourth in the six-man race through the first two of the four laps. But I didn't remain fourth for long.

Beginning in the third lap, the runners ahead of me dropped out of the race. Affected by the invisible but noticeable volcanic ash that permeated the warm spring air, they wandered off the track, dropped to their knees, and gagged or vomited. I pressed on. Equipped with a slightly better air filter, I seized a rare opportunity and outsprinted my remaining competitors to win a running race for the only time.

Favorite Quote: The first paragraph of Chapter 57 was a hard one to write. For the first time, I said goodbye to a novel's protagonist.

In the last minute of her life, Michelle Preston Richardson Land noticed and appreciated the beauty around her. She took in butterflies and flowers, a chipmunk on a log, majestic hemlocks and firs, and a young deer that had stopped to look at her from a few feet away. They were all amazing creations that she wanted to savor one last time.

THE SHOW (2013): I wrote The Show in five weeks. In a burst of NaNoWriMo energy in November 2012, I penned 92,000 words and produced a sequel that was as out of order as a caboose at the head of a train. I produced a third book that should have been a second.

I also produced a book that put me at odds with readers for the first time. In The Show, where Grace Vandenberg Smith stumbles through a time portal and travels from 2002 to 1918, my protagonist, then a married mother of two, makes two unpopular choices. She starts a relationship with a caring U.S. Army officer and literally pushes her parents, a young couple in 1919, into the 21st century.

Many readers ripped Grace's decisions as selfish and reckless. I believe they were practical, understandable, and most of all, defensible. Though Grace loved and missed her husband and daughters, she had no reason to believe she would ever see them again. She was a "single" pregnant woman in an unforgiving age. Captain Walker offered her love, marriage, and a home. Later, when Grace sees a chance to return to 2002, she ends the relationship but complicates another. She reclaims her parents, who died in a 1937 auto accident and left her an orphan. She rewrites the historical record.

Most people, I dare say, would not take the noble route. They would make the best decision with the information available to them. Even so, I appreciate the counterarguments, and if I wrote The Show today, I might heed at least one of them. I can imagine a compelling ending where Grace says so long to her parents in 1919 and lets them live the life they were meant to lead. I can picture a much different story.

On the plus side, The Show was a fun novel to write. It offers a fair amount of humor and features my best marriage proposal, wedding, and honeymoon chapters. It is my ode to Valentine's Day.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 25, Joel Smith, the perpetual playboy, counts his blessings as he marries Grace Vandenberg in Hawaii.

Joel looked at the vision holding his hands and then at the ocean behind her and wondered again whether he had won a cosmic lottery. Saints didn't deserve beach weddings in Kauai, much less spoiled, cocky frat boys who cheated on their taxes, dumped pre-law students who looked like models, and gambled on horses and greyhounds.

THE FIRE (2013): Wallace, Idaho, is the Center of the Universe. I'm serious. You can find incontrovertible "proof" on a manhole cover at the confluence of Bank and Sixth streets. I have seen the intersection on many occasions, including once on June 21, 2013, when I crossed it at exactly the same time protagonist Kevin Johnson did in The Fire.

Needless to say, I did not see Kevin, my curious young time traveler, but I did see a lot of Wallace, a silver-mining community of 900 souls. For three days that June, I researched a book setting by immersing myself in it.

Wallace screams Old West. Every downtown building is on the National Register of Historic Places. Most are survivors of a massive wildfire that roared through town in 1910. For me, it was a perfect place to send a carefree college graduate who inadvertently wanders into danger, adventure, and a love triangle after discovering a time portal on his deceased grandfather's property.

I wandered into a bit of danger myself when I had Kevin, 22, divide his affections between Sadie Hawkins, an unrefined local girl, and Sarah Thompson, a polished teacher from Indiana. Though both ladies were beautiful, smart, and kind, they were one too many for some readers, who formed competing camps. In the end, I let fire and fate, not whim, determine which woman survived to join Kevin in the future.

Though I am superstitious about Friday the 13th, I threw caution to the wind on Friday, September 13, 2013, when I hosted a 50th birthday party for my wife, Cheryl. We dined with friends in Wallace, of course, at a historic saloon called the 1313 Club. Life was never so good!

Favorite Quote: Taken from Chapter 80, Kevin Johnson's final reflection as he drives his family home is still my best ending.

Kevin smiled. He knew that even if the sky were gray tomorrow, it would remain blue in his mind. His last mental snapshot of Wallace, Idaho, would not be of fire, smoke, and death but rather of sunshine, giggles, and kisses. That, he concluded, was progress.

THE MIRROR (2014): Part of the fun of writing fiction is occasionally taking a leap into the unknown. In The Mirror, I took two. I jumped into the world of 2020, assuming it would look like the world of 2014, and jumped into the heads of two teenage protagonists, assuming they would think like me. I soon learned it is never wise to assume.

As most people know, 2020 was not like previous years. COVID-19 took care of that. I did not anticipate a global pandemic when I sent Ginny and Katie Smith, the twin daughters of Joel and Grace, to a country fair near Seattle on September 11, 2020. I did not have the sisters mask up or practice social distancing. I envisioned a different future.

When an author writes about a time he has never seen, he takes a risk. When he writes about people who are much different than himself, he takes a bigger risk. One reader, a woman, let me have it: "This is exactly what you'd expect from a time-travel book about teenage girls written by a middle-aged man."

I shook off the criticism. If there is one thing I have learned as an author, it is that you cannot please everyone. All you can do is tell your story as best you can. So I did just that. In The Mirror, I told a story about 2020, 1964, and 19-year-old sisters and also tackled difficult subjects like racism, domestic violence, and terminal illness for the first time.

Oddly enough, one of the earliest fans of The Mirror was my daughter Amy, a 19-year-old college freshman in 2014. "I liked it, Dad," she said in a phone call. "I liked it a lot." That was good enough for me.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 68, Ginny Smith describes the scene at the Beatles concert in the Seattle Center Coliseum on August 21, 1964.

Then there were the sights – the surreal, stunning, mesmerizing sights that seemed stripped from a newsreel. No matter where Ginny looked, she saw movement – random, constant, violent movement. She saw young girls bounce in their chairs, tear at their hair, and clutch their throats and older ones throw jellybeans, flashbulbs, and themselves at an open stage. She saw wild women and girls gone gaga. She saw estrogen on fire.

Fun Fact: As a University of Oregon graduate, I am a diehard Duck, but I write positively about my University of Washington protagonists in the Northwest Passage novels. That is like a Michigan author lauding Ohio State characters or an Alabama writer speaking fondly of Auburn alums. Sometimes you do what you have to do to tell a story.

With 475,000 sales and more than seventeen thousand reviews, Northwest Passage is still my most widely circulated series. Though I do not plan to write about the Northwest again, I inevitably will. Authors rarely stray far from home. Next: The American Journey series.