Robert Easton – författare

This book is a collection of thirteen exaggerated stories concerning the writer's experiences growing up in a small unnamed town in the Palouse country of eastern Washington state in the early 1930s and 1940s. Chapters 3,4,9 and 10 contain portions that are simply"made up" situations purely from the writer's imagination. This series of stories is an example of creative nonfiction and all of them are based on actual events from the writer's childhood and early adulthood. The names of some places and people have been changed to protect the innocen and the guilty. Some of the characters are composites of country people the writer has known and some of the incidents also are fabrications built upon half-truths. Thus, this book is a collection of tall tales, a confession, some autobiography, and incomplete history of a town of 600 inhabitants, a family, a region, and an era.

This book is divided into two parts, Fiction and Memoirs, but the sections do overlap. I have learned that a small memory or experience is not a story but merely a Vignette. However, that Vignette can turn into a story with the help of some imagination. Therefore, all of these short pieces needed some sort of  "trigger" to bring them to completion.Some of them are based on early experiences in many places throughout the United States and especially in Northern California. Some are offshoots stemming from the many books I have read throughout the years and notes I have gleaned from my journals. I still keep a journal of events in my life as well as thoughts, dreams, and anything which might later turn into a story. In this book, I have merely taken experiences and my imagination to expand the material into hopefully, humorous, thought-provoking stories and memoirs.     As outlandish as this material may seem to the reader, rest assured that seemingly insignificant experiences can be turned into stories. In this short book, I included some material that started out in the real world and I have called this fiction but almost everything in these works started from an actual experience, dream or fantasy.Especially the memoirs which all have some semblance of truth in them. Now as I read through them, it is hard for me to realize how close to my reality most of them are, or were. The first half is straight fiction although the stories all have at least a nugget of truth and reality in them. The one exception is "Francis With An I." Some of them are based on my early experiences in many places throughout the United States, especially in Northern California. Some are offshoots stemming from the many books I have read throughout the years and notes I have gleaned from my journals.The word “Cobwebs” refers to memories buried deep in my past. “Echoes” refers to many of the voices I still hear after a lifetime of having a variety of experiences. “Footprints” refers in both sections of the book to my many years of traipsing through mountains, foothills, and seashores with fellow Sierra Club members, friends, family members or by myself.