HOW MY INTEREST IN J.T. EDSON'S WORK BEGAN

At a used book sale, I found a stack of Western novels for dime each. They included an assortment of Loren Zane Grey titles, a few other authors and a handful of books by J.T. Edson with "A Floating Outfit Story" on the cover. Knowing little of Western authors, I picked them all up.

The books were for my father who had recently retired, and I was looking for something that would interest him.

He read all of the titles in short order, but his imagination was captured most by the J.T. Edson titles and he soon had be searching out more both at the local library and in used book stores.

I soon discovered Edson was not just another Western writer. His Floating Outfit tales which he had been penning since the 1960s were well-researched adventures which   interlaced fact and fiction. Edson's imaginary heroes interacted with real-life historical figures in an intricately structured series filled with footnotes and detail.

I began to read the novels myself, and came to enjoy the exploits of Dusty Fog as much as my father.

In these pages I will try to pull together as much as I can for other Edson readers.