Since graduating from the University of Manitoba, and a year in Paris studying at the Sorbonne, Bill has been a forester, arctic weatherman, immigration officer, and school teacher. He lives in Thunder Bay, selling his books and scenic photography at Fireweed Crafts Inc. His short fiction has appeared in "Geist Magazine" and "Prairie Fire." Recent books include: "Lamplight" (2010), "Sirens" (2009), "The Quarry" (2008), "Shadows at Sunset" (2007), "Ruby's Last Ride and other stories" (2007),"Close the Door Softly and other stories" (2007), "A House in the Country"(2007), "Through a Dark Cloud Shining" (2006), "Catwalk: a feline odyssey" (2006), "Barnabus Snug Harbour" (2006), "Soothsayer" (2006), "The Holly Tree" (2005), "Stinging Nettles" (2005), "Christmas Eve at Silver Islet" (2004), "Vive Zigoto" (2004), "Daughters of the Sun - Filles du soleil" (2003), "Hyenas in the Streets" (2003), "Goodbye Picadilly" (2002), "Patagonian Odyssey!" (2001), "Home Before Dark" (2001), and "The Great Millennium Mount Everest Cat Expedition" (2000).

When Bill MacDonald died last year, we lost not only a gifted storyteller, but the myriad curmudgeonly irreverent misfits, recluses and adventurers, human and occasionally feline that populated his stories. Bill had a wonderful ability to make the reader care about his characters. Through the clear, telling details of his characters' lives, through their words and actions, through quiet humour, he brought us on side and kept us tethered there.

Humour was a natural part of Bill's approach to storytelling, yet he always managed to infuse his stories and novels with feelings of longing and loss - the loss of friends, family, lovers, youth and dreams.

Reading Bill's stories and novels, one never knows for certain how much is fiction and how much is truth - not because the stories and characters are too strange to be true, but because they are too real to be fiction. And this, I believe, is his greatest strength as a writer: his ability to convince the reader that the worlds he creates do exist, and the people who inhabit those worlds do live, do love, do laugh and cry and regret, and sometimes, to our great loss, die.

-Rosalind Maki, NOWW Magazine, Spring 2015

Come spend the formative years with Marge and Johnny, who inhabited the same house without speaking. Attend a one-room country school. Go north to a remote Arctic weather station. Live a year in France. Teach high school for a living. Hook up with an adventurous traveling companion and journey to Switzerland, Patagonia, Turkey, Denmark, the Shetlands, the Faeroes, and Iceland. Cross the Andes by bus. Discover the best wine, the best beer, the best place to write novels. And when it's all over, remember the good days, forget the bad.

Come meet Julia, Lucy, Grace and Ruby, four brave, courageous, compassionate young women who lived and worked at Silver islet during the 1870s, when the fabled offshore mine made many men rich and some men desperate.

Find out what life was really like in the uproarious mainland community, and at nearby prince arthur's landing, during those extraordinary years, and how fortunes failed when the glory days ended.

Rub shoulders with soldiers, sailors, socialites, clergymen, underground miners, politicians, prospectors. Laugh at optimists, sympathize with pessimists. Best of all, say hello to the people who were there, and who stayed behind when everyone else fled. Through Lucy's diary, share the joys and sorrows of dignitaries, celebrities, moguls, and everyday people. Find out why she wouldn't leave Silver Islet, even if she could, and why Happy-Go-Lucky meant so much to her.

If life is a journey, then buckle up, because Leonard is behind the wheel and on the run, and we have a full tank of gas.

So come meet Leonard Roche, a gifted, yet troubled young expatriate, loved by some, hated by others, scholar, traveller, teacher. Son of a disbelieving clergyman, he is descended from Norman conquerors, which may explain his wild streak, his love of pubescent girls, his restless urge for exile and adventure. His talents are many, but so are his indiscretions. He attracts and repels women, admires the 5th century Visigoths. He has a thirst for life, yet is beset by fears.

Come live with him in Thunder Bay, Paris and Gibraltar. Flee with him by car through France and Spain, spend time with him on the Mediterranean beaches and the Costa del Sol. Come meet his companions and pursuers Megan, Nadine, Athénée, Anne-Marie, Melanie, Cosmo, Mme Longchamp, policewoman Valente and the narrator. But when the fun and games are over, and he has lost his nerve, prepare yourself for what Leonard himself calls a fate worse than death.

Come rub shoulders with the vain, intolerant, backbiting members of the Bell, Book & Candle poetry club (B.B.C. for short). Meet the club´s sneaky, opportunistic founder, Lester Rosenblum, unscrupulous retired car salesman. Meet his cousin and ill-fated assistant, Lucy Fleck. Meet weird Narcissa Pearsall, landlady, gift shop owner, and her live-in handyman/security guard, Jason Hake. Best of all, meet the forty poets, read their submitted poems, some funny, some sad, some vulgar, some not bad. Read their critiques of each other´s work, some bitter, some base, some perceptive. Read their truthful, unflattering bios, their editor's caustic comments. Percy Bysshe Shelley should turn over in his grave.

Come discover how Oscar the cat ends up at Gull's Wing Sanctuary, a retirement home full of fascinating, warm-hearted, eccentric people. Watch him gain their trust and affection as he settles in and becomes a keen observer of human nature. Share his joy, his sadness, his amazement, as he becomes part of the daily rhythm of the institution. See the residents through his eyes. Some love him, some not so much. When he arrives in a snowstorm Christmas Eve, he is welcomed by some, ignored by others. But soon he's being invited to spend the night in their rooms, to comfort them when they're under the weather, as only care-giving cats can do. Frolic with him on summer evenings in the Gulls'; Wing garden, listen to the Gull's Wing musicians, attend their parties, meet Talullah, the love of Oscar's life. Forgive him for celebrating his first anniversary with a Christmas gift from Nurse Villiers of a five-dollar bag of Colombian catnip. What a difference a year makes.

Picture yourself at a hedonistic family reunion of nineteen lovable descendants of Leonidas and Pearl Tredgold, gathered together at their ancestral summer home for a three-day jubilation. Grandpa Leo came to Canada from the Shepley orphanage in Bournemouth in 1889. He was eleven years old. If he were still alive, he'd be 131. He spent his lonely adolescent years on the Toronto waterfront, then went west by train to Port Arthur in 1899. A year later he married Pearl Nettleship, a young unwed mother, and after having his arm broken by a runaway horse became a successful haberdasher and lamp maker. The following year Pearl bore him a son, William, my future grandfather. And the year after that, twin baby girls, Imogen and Idabel, who sadly did not survive infancy. So come rub shoulders with Grandpa William's three dutiful daughters, Ruth, Marge and Rosemary, plus their unsavory husbands, adult children and sons-in-law. Come join the muckraking fun. Help dig up the past. Sample Uncle Lester's potent rum punch. He calls it "truth serum." Laugh or be shocked, as nostalgia turns into reproach, innocence into guilt, anecdote into accusation. And when it's all over, try picking up the pieces. It won't be easy, but that's what loving families do.

Come deep-sea cruising for two adventure-filled weeks aboard the refurbished bumboat Pelican. Circumnavigate Thunder Bay´s Outer Harbour in fine and stormy weather. Like Ulysses sailing home to Ithaca on the mythical Mediterranean, visit Caribou Island, Hare Island, Angus Island, Pie Island, Flatland Island, Thompson Island, Spar Island, Mission Island, Medusa Cove, the Welcome Islands. Enjoy the company of skipper Pelican Pete and his seven wily shipmates. Encounter the Oracle of Shuniah, carnivorous plants, albino cranes, nude kayakers, Mission Marsh crocodilians. Listen to the talking rocks and the Ojibway legends of Nanabijou, who once slept on his stomach and may very well do so again someday. Experience the joys of moonwort and goldenrod, the tang of nautical poetry. And when the voyage is over, sail home a wiser, braver, happier person

Isolation, like marriage, can test one´s mettle, as Marge and Zelda discover. Recently widowed, they have more in common than the sudden loss of their husbands: courage, determination, defiance, self-esteem, a zest for living.

But urban society can be coldly judgemental toward widows in mourning, and the two ladies welcome an opportunity to serve as summer wardens of remote Trowbridge lighthouse in northern Lake Superior. There, they experience freedom from prejudice and an opportunity to regain control of their destinies. Unfortunately, forces on Trowbridge Island prove to be as treacherous as the surrounding waters of Lake Superior.

Trowbridge lighthouse, presently an unmanned, automated Coast Guard beacon, halfway between Thunder Cape and Silver Islet, on the dark side of the Sleeping Giant, is my favourite maritime destination. On warm summer afternoons, I love to boat across to this craggy, storm-swept atoll, tie up at the derelict pier, and climb the western cliff to the defunct light tower. The view from there is spectacular, the breeze fresh, and it´s pleasant to eat lunch on the helicopter landing-pad and watch freighters steaming by, bound for Sault Ste Marie and the lower lakes. Sadly, the lightkeeper´s dwelling, facing the open sea, is now vacant, uninhabited. As is the entire island, for that matter, unless you count the hostile crows and seagulls.

In the old days, Alabaster Bay, a remote, idyllic community on the rugged north shore of Lake Superior, wedged between coast and cliff, owed its prosperity to gypsum. Huge white slabs of it were quarried under a towering escarpment and crushed into high-grade alabaster, which was then bagged and trucked to Crystal City for shipment. Oh, the gypsum quarry had its share of fatal accidents (which turned out not to be accidents), and Alabaster Bay had more than its share of mysterious deaths, house fires, and hauntings. Today, with its quarry more like an open grave, its crushers rusting in the sun, its loading docks overgrown, Alabaster Bay, under its ominous, brooding cliff, is in the throes of becoming a ghost town. And yet, the coroner still makes frequent visits, as do police, crime reporters, and curiosity seekers. Our narrator knows what´s going on. In fact, he's as guilty as sin. He says he´ll never leave. He doesn´t dare. Pull up a chair and listen to his story.

   Fabien LeBeau´s World War II memoir begins with childhood recollections and ends with his death a few years ago at Neuilly asylum. All his life he struggled to comprehend loyalty, treachery, betrayal, courage, bravery, senseless cruelty. He reveals what´s going on in his mind, in his family, in the provincial towns he inhabits and in his parochial schools he teaches at. He tells of his father´s loss of morals and his mother´s flagrant consorting with high-ranking German officers, despite her intuition of ultimate tragedy, in exchange for lavish gifts and creature comforts. Fabien is 11 years old when the Germans occupy France at the beginning of World War II. His father, an ambitious, unscrupulous lawyer, moves his family (and his secretary) to Paris from Avignon and collaborates with the enemy in order to "take advantage of golden opportunities." He soon becomes a bureaucrat in the ruthless Expropriation Unit of the Nazi military government, with an office at the Palais de Justice and influential friends at Gestapo Headquarters in the Meurice Hotel. All it costs him is his patriotism, his integrity and his sense of decency - a small price to pay, or so he thinks, until 1944, when Paris is finally liberated.
   Meet Yveline Aurignac, the love of Fabien´s life. Meet his friend and rival, Lolive Vellefaux, whose father is a double agent with sinister obligations. Meet Major Forst and Captain Schiller, two ruthless, dedicated German officers, as different as night and day. Meet Fabien´s doctors, teaching collegues, friends and enemies. Be there as he not only survives but rises above the perils of liberation, revenge, his father´s murder, his mother´s commitment to Neuilly psychiatric hospital. Share his horror of war, his fascination with the military mind, his joy of life, his ultimate faith in the human spirit.

   The first volume of Bill MacDonald´s short stories begins over cafeteria cocoa in Snug Harbour retirement home and slips easily into the St. Lawrence coastal village of Cap-Rosiers for cigarettes and ragoût, then effortlessly to the Mediterranean and Ligurian Sea for espresso and cold toast and after too much wine spins right around the globe. Wherever these stories take us we move just slow enough past and close enough above and below the surfaces of the most interesting people, their foods, drinks, towns, weather, sounds and smells, to effectively embed Bill´s stories in the reader so that you really feel you have met and remember these characters and places. No matter how eccentric the people who enter his lens may first appear, you never lose the sense that everyone everywhere is so very human, alike, funny, real and whether they are visiting, dining, dying, stealing, cooking, installing a bronze fountain, or just playing nude volleyball, it all seems to be for the right reason. Bill maps the planet with these characters with his high resolution sense of place and nails the invisible beam that falls on all of us. He decodes the secrets of the human condition and presents us with a virtual treasure of short stories encapsulating far more than a glimpse of 20th-21st Century geography and human behaviour.

   This second volume of Bill MacDonald´s "best of" short stories begins by Mosquito Creek with the story of Aunt Leone and her irresistible raspberry plantation that attracts some very special visitors; we meet the soothsayers, extraordinary clairvoyant Aunt Sibyl and Alexa of Winnipeg; discover Uncle Sol and Harvey´s suspicious friendship; the Valdemar brothers from Denmark settle in Bornholm Bay, Lake Superior, melt snow to drink, and build a magnificent duplex; meet Grandpa and Grandma Oldfield; tour Paipoonge Township; paddle about Crystal Lake; speed through the night on the back roads of Scoble Townships without brakes or lights; meet sensuous Yvette and Noelle, prostitutes who treat writer´s block in Toronto. Most of these poignant and humourous short stories are set in the homes, yards, farms, beaches, and in creeks and caves around Thunder Bay, Ontario.

   This, the third volume of Bill MacDonald´s 'best of' short stories, begins by Lake Superior with the title story 'Close the Door Softly', the moving photograph of the author and Eva. As with all of Bill´s stories, humour softens the clear light falling on his characters lives. Bill´s stories are set in places that we can visit and of course many of us have. He provides a kind of map of the heart of the points between the physical locations and the people that visit them. Both, over time, cannot resist change.

Come meet Clare Brendan Hollinshead: soldier, trucker, vagabond. Customs Officer, lady-killer, bon vivant. Twice married to beautiful women. Author of six and half novels written under the pen name Colwyn Idris (Home fires, Bourgebus Wood, Forbidden Island, Dangerous Permission, Letters to Ada, Portals, Chapel of Harlots). Boozing buddy of famed backwoods scribe Olaf Sigurdsson. Come travel with him to Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Saint-Pierre, Sicily, Calabria and Tuscany. Party with him at Max Hurtig's rustic riverside inn and at a brothel in Napels. Live with him in an abandoned Franciscan monastery in Capodimonte. Convalesce with him in a field hospital in the Italian seaport of Genoa. Meet the girls who loved and hated him: Lise, Gina, Jessie, Concetta, Virginia, Molly, Blackie, Carmela and Steffi. Retreat with him to a writer's cabin among the tall pines at Pigeon River. Travel with him to Wales, land of his ancestors and home of his mythical hero, Caernarfon. But first, come to his funeral.

Accompany Rufus the cat on his six-month, 44-block, 75,000-step journey from Skyline Avenue in Jumbo Gardens to Lake Street at the waterfront. Discover his reasons for attempting this monumental trek and join the celebration at its successful conclusion. Watch him cope with rain, snow, sleet, wind, crows, traffic, unfriendly dogs and eccentric people. Meet the cats and humans who sheltered and encouraged Rufus, as well as those who told him he hadn't a hope. Visit the Bughouse Bar and Grill and try some quality Colombian catnip, sent up from Medellin by Juan Escobar, well-known cat fancier and youngest son of the infamous Pablo. This evening, join Rufus, Guinevere, the widow Agrippa and Theo the coffinmaker on Venetia's balcony for a glass of wine.

   Come meet dwarfish Nigel Tillich, oracle, clairvoyant, guru, soothsayer. He sees visions, makes predictions, is never wrong. After seventeen years in a mental institution, he breaks free and turns his talents to good use. Fame and fortune do not lessen his ability. His dreams are just as vivid, his prophecies just as spooky.
   Come meet Horace, Nigel´s cave-dwelling grandfather, and his brother Algernon, a Toronto hoodlum. Meet pigtailed Scorpion, his personal chauffeur, and lovely Alyssa, his Filipino chambermaid. Meet Ursula LeGros, manager of the infamous Edgewater Hotel and Nigel´s protector. Meet Yvette Malbranche, who lives in a cardboard commune under the Algoma Street bridge and loves him like a mother. Meet Rudy Heyhoe, who sleeps for ten years and is run over by a train, just as Nigel predicted. These are fine, upstanding people, who know Nigel better than he knows himself, and are happy to share their secret.

Barnabus Snug Harbour, out back of beyond in O´Connor Township, is not a harbour, nor is it anywhere near navigable water. It´s a sort of retirement facility, a halfway house, a landlubber´s hospice. It´s not an asylum, not a sanitarium, not a nursing home. Likable Felix Kirkeby, recently arrived from Millhaven Penitentiary, where he served twenty-two years for snuffing a car thief, has said of it "This is no loony bin. It may be a refuge, but these people aren´t crazy." Except maybe for Lars Bourbaki, who allegedly cooked and ate one of his own children. That´s what he was charged with, and what he confessed to, but it was never proven. He certainly doesn't advocate eating children, unless it´s a dire emergency and you have a surplus. But the rest of these folk are fine. Like me, some have survived bad luck and hard times. If you humour them, they laugh. If you hassle them, they fight back. Felix himself admits to hearing his late mother´s voice, outside his room, near the window. Sometimes he hears her calling him. On moonlit nights he opens the curtains and looks out at Barnabas Snug Harbour´s snowy hedges and skeletal poplars. There´s never anyone there. Sidney the psychologist, an expert on dreams, chalks it up to auditory hallucinations. Which makes it no less spooky. Come meet George, Julius, Sidney and Massey, the Fairy Queens. Meet Isobel Hornchurch, who imagines herself besieged by wolves, when it´s yellow jacket wasps she should fear. Meet Arlo Masaryk, palsied barber and ice sculptor, who is obsessed with trains. Meet Luka Pilsudski, greatgrandson of Poland´s first president, who once piloted barges on the Vistula. Meet Paloma Hartley, who sits at her loom day after day, like the Lady of Shalott. And Heddy Fillmore, a notorious madam. And Nurse McQuilter, who keeps the lid on. And Zachary the parrot, who sings "The Streets of Laredo." Meet dwarfish Balthazar, the handyman, and Archibald, the pot-smoking gardner. Meet Pastor Tippecanoe, who drinks vodka and sees angels. Meet Serena Patapsco, a violinist. Best of all, meet the narrator, who finds his look-alike father at Barnabas Snug Harbour, but is powerless to rescue him.

     Whittaker Jones and Uncle Paddy Truaxe, pillars of society, married with children, respected middle-aged school teachers, abandon their wives to travel the world and set up house together in a penthouse condo at Waverley Park Towers. Why? Good question. Do they aspire to be monks? Hardly. Gurus? Oracles? Maybe. Are they remorseful? Far from it. It´s either a long, complicated story, or else a very simple one.
     Come meet these two strange, adventurous, insightful gentlemen, visit them in their penthouse apartment above the clouds, follow them through their daily lives. Find out who their friends and enemies are, see what makes them tick. Drink a toast, join the celebration, but whatever you do, don't pity them. Share their joy, their misery, their glory days, their inevitable sorrow.

Enjoy the harbour view from the balcony of Dominic Peebles´ penthouse apartment in Waverley Park Towers. Learn the secret ingredients of bhang biscuits, otherwise known as jungle cookies. Spend a once-in-a-lifetime vacation at historic Silver Islet with Gallows-Tree, William the Conqueror, Cousin Freddy, Ramona Rose and Stephanie. Enjoy magic nights at Mother Trumpville´s tearoom, listening to the Redpath sisters. Play baseball in the graveyard. See Sports Day run amok. Watch AGM turn into a nostalgic, stinging-nettle-inspired songfest. Make it a summer to remember.

Come stroll the snowy Avenue at Silver Islet on a calm, moonlit, winter´s night, accompanied by a phantom fox and the Ghost of Christmas Past. Pause along the way and contemplate miners´ houses dating back to 1870, and more recent houses too. Renew acquaintances with the inhabitants of these stalwart, lake facing dwellings. If we´re lucky, we may even hear their voices, share their thoughts. Even if we don´t, it´s a nice night for a walk. And if friends and family members are no longer with us, we´ll memorize them. Think of this as a frosty Memory Lane. Come along. It´s a perfect night for nostalgia.

   Come travel by car through southwestern France with Zigoto, the cat. See towns and villages though her eyes. Meet her two incompetent chauffers — Catherine Obigny-Bernon, a French journalist, and Guillaume, an itinerant teacher of conversational English. Enjoy the open road, the beaches, the vineyards. Stay in fine (and not-so-fine) hotels. Live with Basques and Visigoths. Visit La Rochelle, St-Jean-de-Luz, Carcassonne and Nantes. Sample the sights, sounds and delicacies that appeal to a wise, well-travelled cat.

Daughters of the Sun / Filles du Soleil — a dilapidated rooming house at St-Tropez on the French Riviera, inhabited in the off-season, when rates are low and tenants scarce, by writers, artists, and other ne´er do-wells.
   Meet, among others, Plessi Toussaint, one of France´s most infamous literary figures, winner of the coveted Prix Médici, author of such scurrilous books as Crédillon, Condamné, and Magnéto; Yvette Chanteloup, who gives clients more than strawberries in the back room of her waffle shop; her mysterious cousin, Iseult Plonevez, the author´s muse, who fed her husband to the pigs; Dora and Polly, Irish expatriates; Honoré Velmandois, defrocked Sorbonne professor; Lise Escarène, married novelist and party-girl, with whom the author falls madly in love. Monsieur Nemours, concierge of Filles du Soleil; and meet Umberto, the bus driver; Madame Ste-Foy, tour guide on a pilgrimage to Rome; Marius, Baptiste and Antoine, waiters at le Gorille, a waterfront bar; meet the narrator, a struggling, misguided writer and Plessi Toussaint´s protégé, who, while briefly intimidated by these misfits and party animals, eventually fits right in.

"She went to Dr. Coombs, stood looking down at him, ´Who´s the hyena now, doctor?´ she asked, prodding him in the ribs with her toe, ´Not to alarm you, but I see the day coming when hyenas will be in control. You´ll look out your window and there´ll be nothing but hyenas. If things keep on the way they are, the streets will be full of them. Hyenas in every direction, as far as the eye can see. How´s that grab you?´" Come meet Lord Alfred, King Tut, spaceman Guthrie, Effie, Daisy, Petronella, chief Randy, Ms. Suderman, Ms. Culpepper and nurse Bellingham.

   Come meet Uncle Sol Winfield, lover, traveller, prankster, teacher of Shakespeare, in places as far-flung as Italy and the Shetland Islands. He´s funny, tragic, a social outcast, a misunderstood poet. At times, he's a lonely man, though during his turbulent life he´s had a marriage, a hundred friends, a dozen love affairs. He enjoys courting women, reciting poetry in pubs, fondling Filipino cabin boys. Or so he says. His boss at Eden Park, Principal Spottiswoode, once told him, "You´re a dangerous trouble-maker, Solly. I have a whole dossier on you, which I intend to give to the proper authorities."
   Come and observe this restless, multi-faceted man through the eyes of his nephew, who travels with him halfway around the world, who admires him and marvels at him, yet does not entirely understand him. Come listen to Uncle Sol´s stories, meet his nemesis, Miss Bangbelly. Flirt with Katie, his favourite barmaid. Best of all, share a grog with him at the Chulflay Bar & Grill on Bay Street — a good place to be on a winter´s afternoon.

In this Chatwinesque, globe-trotting memoir, the author´s peregrinations take him to Portugal, Corsica, Provence, St-Pierre, Fontainebleau, Toronto and Winnipeg. Making his way around the world as an itinerant journalist and school teacher, he encounters no shortage of weird people and bizarre places. There is more to these journeys of discovery than mere pedagogy or journalism, however. There is a thirst for knowledge and adventure and some serious jousting with personal and ancestral demons. On occasion, bedrooms and classrooms become battlefields. And though the narrator learns more than he teaches, absorbs more than he imparts, it´s doubtful that he´ll ever get home before dark. Like the albatross and the seafarer of Norse legend, he may, in fact, be condemned to a life of wandering.

On the stormy night of September 29, 1926, the luxurious American passenger steamer, Picadilly, crossing Lake Superior from Isle Royale to Canada, is wrecked, after striking a reef between Burnt Island and Powder Rock. Fortunately, all 162 of her passengers are rescued before the ship disappears beneath the waves. They are taken in and cared for by residents of Silver Islet, a nearby coastal community, who, before Picadilly slips to her dark, watery grave, do some very bizarre things. Their actions will haunt them for many years. Indeed, there are those who say that the ghost of Captain John Greenbrier, Picadilly´s master, haunts them to this very day.

Explore Patagonia, from Tierra del Fuego north to Calafate and the Perito Moreno glacier.Travel by boat down the wild, remote Chilean fjords. Cross the Andes by bus from Argentina.Follow the old airmail routes of fearless St-Exupéry. Visit the island of Chiloé, and the stunningSan Rafael glacier in southern Chile. Spend time in the lake district and in the frontier towns ofCastro, Bariloche, Trelew, and Puerto Madryn. See the old Argentine prison in Ushuaia - theworld's most southerly city. And best of all, meet the amazing people of Patagonia, bothArgentineans and Chileans, who share the same climate, language, and thirst for independence,but not the same politics and not the same views. Come follow with Bill and Catherine as theyjourney through this unique and beautiful land.

Informative and enjoyable. Learn about the great Millennium cat expedition to Mt. Everest. About a long line of traditional ships´ cats. About cats that travel the world. About city cats, farm cats, computer-literate cats. Make friends with French cats, Bavarian cats and a colony of cats living under a grain elevator. Read about a Cuban cat, a lighthouse cat and a cat who loved motorcycles...about cats who achieve, outsmart and survive against all odds ... stories told by cats, for cats.

Following the publication of Tyke & Dusty in 1997, I received dozens of letters from readers telling me their stories of cats. At craft markets and book signings, people would stop and relate amusing feline adventures. Many of them had to do with the arrival on their doorsteps (usually in winter) of stray cats. You couldn´t help but wonder how these furry orphans knew instinctively where to seek food and shelter. Not that there weren´t occasional tricky complications, such as jealous pets already in residence, or a spouse who didn"t like cats. But nine times out of ten the situation resolved itself in the foundling´s favour, even if, in some cases, it required an attitude adjustment on the part of the designated host. What struck me too was that many of these unsolicited testimonials came from cat owners who were willing, even anxious, to provide details of their own personal lives.