Let me tell you about my writing.

My first book followed a long, arduous motor trip through Afghanistan, for which I could find very little background material. So I wrote the introductory book that I had needed before the trip began. Eunice Blake at Lippincott was ready to add an unknown country to the Portraits of the Nations series, and agreed to publish my manuscript if I cut it in half. To my great delight The Land and People of Afghanistan sold well and continously for four decades and went through three editions.

Bob and I lived for long periods of time in Lebanon, Pakistan, Niger, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Malaysia, and Western Samoa, and traveled enthsiastically in neighboring countries. The other four Portraits of the Nations followed: The Land and People of Malaysia, The Land and People of Sierra Leone, The Land and People of Liberia, and The Land and People of the Arabian Peninsula. For the Arabian Peninsula book, I actually spent a month alone traveling across Saudi Arabia. Some of my favorite stories resulted from that trip.

My textbook, the Noble and Noble African Studies Program, is out of print, but individual titles from the series of ten illustrated booklets appear on Amazon.com.

I began writing fiction while we were in Africa because the 1970s was not a good period for criticizing the corrupt governments of that continent. Bisha of Burundi and Salah of Sierra Leone date from that period. I also fictionalized my more recent Indian book, When the Great Canoes Came, because the only source material was written by Englishmen, and you must read between the lines to figure out what they were doing to the local tribes.

Our retirement home sits beside the James River, where once the Pasbehegh Indians lived. An anthropologist teaching at William and Mary challenged me to explain how the intrusion of the English affected the Indians of the Virginia Peninsula. The book became When the Great Canoes Came. And a later book, Lonesome Road, builds from the material I collected about the Virginia Indians today as I was writing their history.

When we retired to Williamsburg, my daughter Candace, a lighthouse historian, introduced me to the wonderful world of lighthouses. She does the research, and together we have written and published five books. They are listed here on my Published Books page and linked to Candace's web page, where you will find complete descriptions.

Many of my older books are out of print, but I find them listed on Amazon.com.