Australian reader amazed by guns in Father Hardy Mysteries

A letter from an Australian reader.

Today I received both a very nice review and a note from an Australian reader. With a surprising comment. 

First a bit of information. My Father Hardy Alaska Mystery Series takes place in the Territory of Alaska, circa 1955. For the most part, it's what I remember from growing up then in the tiny river town of Nenana. 

The reader said ... "(for me) the most exotic thing about the book isn't the setting or the weather (even though it was +95F here when I read it). It's the guns. Huge numbers of them. Armories in every home. I've heard of places in arctic Norway where it is illegal to go outside without a gun because of the polar bears, but Alaska..."

Raise your hand if you grew up with guns!

Here's what I told him. I'll bet this is also true for many of you. 

"As to the guns .. it probably seems strange from there, but when I was a kid … the 1950s in Alaska … every home had a gun rack, and most pickup trucks. 

My father … a priest like Father Hardy, owned a .22 pump, 12 gauge J.C. Higgins (Sears in the day) shotgun, and a WWI surplus Springfield .30-06. So yes, lots of guns. They didn’t lock them up like they do today. 

The .22 was mostly to teach us to shoot, the .12 gauge was for birds, and the .30-06 was a moose gun. I think he usually had a pistol, too, for berry picking and such. We were too far south for polar bears but it was a rare year someone didn’t get mauled or killed by a grizzly. 

I do remember that if we didn’t get a moose, we had a lean year, though in the village, many shared." 

Comment if you, also, were raised with gun. 

I told my reader it was a fairly normal Alaska experience, then and probably now. Comments? I'd love to hear 'em. And I'll pass them along. 

But ... why don't you write something real?

Father Hardy, Book 4

For years, I didn't tell people I made my living as a writer. It seemed pretentious. Also, there is a real disconnect between 'writing for hire,' and the heady world of the starving novelist.

When meeting for the first time, people always ask what you ... what I ... do. It's the frame we apply to how we intend to feel about new people, whether they are interesting enough to know. Worthy to know. I don't think it's something to get worked up about. It's just how we adjust to strangers.

So now, I tell people ... not that I am a writer ... but that I am the author of two book series about Alaska, one an adult mystery series, and the other an adventure series for the middle grades. I'm more comfortable with that. Yes, I know. Not a lot of difference.

So then, the person asks if I've been published. Back when I just wrote for money, this would often be the point where their eyes glazed over and they began to drift. Never mind that I wrote for "A" list companies like McDonald's, Starbucks, and Holland America Lines.

Seven books in.

Skip to now. I've just published my seventh novel, have a one-off novel with an agent in New York, and am writing books nine and ten. 

What hangs people up now is that I'm only writing mysteries. Not writing something real, which would be the meaningful novel. Maybe the fabled Great American Novel.

I think I am. I'm writing about new love, enduring love, and death. I'm writing about different tribes and races co-existing, or not. About concepts of belief and religion. 

People sometimes exclaim that I'm using a priest for a "detective." Who better to sort out the difference between right and wrong. Who better to explain how the rubber of our humanity reaches the road. And yes, wrapped in entertainment. 

Did you know there are more than three hundred-sixty clerical or near-clerical "detectives?" Quotes, because they're not all religious bishops, fathers, brothers or sisters. Don't believe me? Here's the list: CLERICAL DETECTIVES: http://detecs.org 

Read me.

Here's an invitation, or a challenge. You can read quite a few pages of all four of my mystery novels on Amazon ... FREE. Here's the link: https:  Father Hardy Alaska Mystery Series

Am I writing something real? You decide.