I was distracted from Driftless momentarily by a slim yet delightful tome entitled The Fiddler’s Gun: Letters by A.S. Peterson, a companion to one of my favorite books of last year, The Fiddler’s Gun. Gray skies hovered over Houston both yesterday and today, so I curled under a blanket, sipped rooibos almond tea, and finished this book, defying the gloomy weather to squelch my bibliophilic productivity.
As Peterson states in “Regarding Letters Found Herein”:
During my research for “The Fiddler’s Gun,” I came across countless references to letters alleged to have been written by Fin Button to her childhood companion, Peter LaMee. In my recounting of her flight from colonial Georgia and the subsequent rise to her now legendary station in the maritime tradition, I have, regrettably, made only passing mention of her epistolary efforts. Unfortunately, I was unable to do the considerable legwork necessary to unearth the letters themselves during the writing of the book.
In the time since my completion of the manuscript I have taken up the quest of tracking down as many of these letters to Peter as possible.
I mean, for one letter dated February 12th, 1776, Peterson rappelled out of a stealth helicopter and descended into the halls of Vanderbilt’s archival wing, for God’s sake.
Seeing as I loved Peterson’s novel, The Fiddler’s Gun, I thoroughly enjoyed reading each and every letter in this companion book. It’s not every day that we get to peek into one of our favorite literary character’s snail mail correspondence, and that Fin Button is something else.
The Fiddler’s Gun: Letters is a well-deserved bonus for Peterson’s patrons who made the printing of his novel possible, but there are about 50 extra copies for sale in the Rabbit Room store right now. He’s also giving the digital version of Letters away free to book clubs reading The Fiddler’s Gun.
In my opinion, you should snatch a book of these letters before they’re all gone – this is the one and only printing. Or read The Fiddler’s Gun in your book club and receive both. But whatever you do, be sure to read Peterson’s novel – I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Oh, and at the end of Letters, there’s an excerpt from Fiddler’s Green, “coming to a bookshelf near you Christmas 2010.”