The Uttermost Place is a thriller set in the wild's of Patagonia. A land of incredible mountains, huge glaciers, vast forests and relentless wind. It is the development of a forest project that drives the story. The novel's protagonist, comes to Patagonian Chile to buy a mine. He is a mining engineer, and always a risk-taker. His most recent mine deal was a disaster, costing him his girlfriend, his savings, and tainting his professional reputation. Now he's at the uttermost place on earth, lured by another deal. He has also agreed to look at a forest on Tierra del Fuego for a Chilean friend. The forest is a surprise - vast and valuable - and catches his imagination. The two friends plunge in, purchasing forestland. But they have problems - unscrupulous and deadly rivals, a missing Sweden forestry expert, and a German environmentalist - a woman with attitude.
About the Author: I grew up on a farm in Ontario, moving to a small town when I was eleven. I discovered the town's library and proceeded to clean it out. Adventure and suspense fiction were my favorites. Writing is something I always thought about, and came much later when I believed I had a story to tell. My university credentials are in engineering and economics. My professional working life has been spent toiling on energy and environmental projects, mostly in Canada but also internationally. In the 1980s and 1990s I had a series of assignments in Chile. The setting and plot for The Uttermost Place draws on my experiences in Chile, and a forestry project of a Chilean friend. You may wonder why an energy and environmental person writes using mining and forestry as a background for a novel. I started out in university to be a geologist and spent a summer tramping Northern Ontario with a geologist's hammer in my hand before working underground for a summer in a copper mine in Quebec. I guess I'm leading an alternative-life-not-traveled in my writing. Still, on the knowledge side of the ledger, one absorbs a lot about mining and forestry as an economist in British Columbia. I believe readers want a story that takes them somewhere interesting with characters they care about; they don't want technical detail and a whole lot of business mumbo-jumbo. I hope I have achieved a balance where the reader has just enough technical information presented in layman's terms to frame a story that flows seamlessly.