White Silence (27 page)

The second—and larger—liberty has to do with dates. Astute viewers of
Highlander
will know that the on-screen date for Double Eagle is 1888. I managed to not take note of that until I was some way into the book. The fact that Kit O’Brady left San Francisco for Alaska in a steamer that went down off Portland, (an event that actually did happen in 1898) led me to mistake the late 1880s for the late 1890s.

But the story flows so well from Double Eagle that—inspired by Rebecca Neason, who moved the Chinese invasion of Tibet a decade in the interests of her story—I have concluded that in the world of Duncan MacLeod, the Last Great Gold Rush occurred some nine years earlier. (This is the same world where Lord Byron’s friend the doctor is named Adams rather than Polidori.)

If you’ve read
White Silence
and would like to know more about the Gold Rush, go buy
Klondike
by Pierre Berton, Canada’s premiere historian. His father crossed the Chilkoot in 1898 and hearing of that experience led to his lifelong fascination with the event. Some of the truths he recounts are as fantastical as—well, as the existence of Immortals.

I further recommend the novels and short stories of Jack London, from whom I borrowed my title. His fiction is as true as Berton’s fact. London was there—as an adventurer and as a reporter.

The poetry of Robert Service, the other author usually associated with the time and place of
White Silence,
provided my epigraph (and Minnie Dale’s name). Service wasn’t there, until sometime afterward. Nonetheless, his verse—doggerel though it may be—is filled with a real sense of the land and the people.

In the rest of the book, all of the background information of Danny O’Donal’s life is factual—details of place and events in New York City, both before and after the war; details of the aftermath of Cold Harbor and the siege of Petersburg; details of life in Temperanceville, which in 1872 became part of the city of Pittsburgh.

Other minor details—information about Native Canadian burial practices, the fact that Gounod’s
Faust
was the most popular opera in America at the turn of the last century, the approximate weight of mules—came from a variety of sources, all of whom I thank for their help.

So—enjoy! And maybe learn a thing or two about one of the most fascinating historical events of the last century.

On sale in July 1999 from Warner Aspect!

HIGHLANDER: BARRICADES

by Donna Lettow

author of HIGHLANDER: THE ZEALOT

YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION …

MacLeod is teaching journalism at the University of Paris as the turmoil of 1968 escalates from protests to strikes and rebellions. Duncan’s students and friends are manning barricades … just like those the Highlander remembers from 1848. A century ago MacLeod joined the doomed protesters; now he’s fighting to prevent a repeat of an historic tragedy. But a violent anarchist—and rival immortal—will stop at nothing until the streets of Paris are again flooded with the blood of young idealists …

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE …

He is Immortal. A Scottish warrior born four hundred years ago. He is not alone. For centuries he has fought others like himself. He can die only if a foe takes his head, capturing his life-force in an event known as the Quickening. But his battles are eternal … for in the end,
there can be only one.
He is Duncan MacLeod. The Highlander.

CRUCIBLE OF ICE

Three Immortals—MacLeod, his old friend Hugh Fitzcairn, and Fitz’s student, young Danny O’Donal—trek to the Yukon, seeking glory, gold, and the Northern Lights. But in the raging blizzards of the far north, the quest becomes a nightmare. For even Immortals can starve, freeze, and go mad, trapped in a frozen hell where implacable nature can kill the Highlander or his companions—again, and again, and again …