A Word About the Way People Talk

Several readers have kindly pointed out that the characters in my new book do not speak correct English. They are quite right. Neither do the people I grew up among, and it would be a poor sort of honesty to pretend otherwise.

There are several distinct dialects in that book, and I did not stir them in at random. Each was worked out painstakingly, from memory and from listening, so that a boy from Pike County would never be mistaken for a man from the Missouri back country.

I mention it only so readers will not suppose all those characters were trying to talk alike and failing.