About the Author.

Michael Romkey lives in Bettendorf, Iowa, near the Mississippi River.

The Past...

I am – to slip out of the third person for a few moments – a native of Burlington, Iowa, a sleepy river town 90 miles south of where I presently reside.

The environs of Burlington played an important part in shaping my imagination, a faculty no writer can get far without. It is impossible for me to think about Burlington without slipping into a dreamy state where memories and melancholy mingle. The town was founded as soon as the Iowa territory opened to settlement. An early capitol of the territory, Burlington was a thriving community when the river and railroads were the chief means of transportation through the Midwest. Without an interstate highway, after World War II the town fell into a swooning decline. (My regrets to the Burlington Chamber of Commerce and other civic chest-beaters.)

Burlington is a town of bluff-top mansions, some looking long-of-tooth now that most of the money has left town, and tiny neighborhood parks and half-forgotten cemeteries.

My ancestors on my father’s side are buried in Aspen Grove Cemetery. My grandfather and grandmother and great-aunt and great-uncle lie in the new part of the cemetery, which is the sort of manicured memorial park you’ll find in any suburb. But if you drive in through the original entrance, by the ornate iron gates, past the Civil War monument and the limestone tablets remembering people who left this world two centuries removed from the present, tombstones reeling drunkenly, like teeth in an old-man’s skull. It is there, overlooking a small hollow, you come to the original Romkey family plot.

There are often surprises revealed in the old family burial plot. Bits of history that have been forgotten – intentionally or not – are sometimes revealed, like old court records that can be discovered, tucked away in dusty files in the courthouse basement, but never completely expunged. It was during my first visit to the original family plot a year or so back that I discovered my father, always spoken of as an only child, in fact had an older sister who died young. Of her I know nothing beyond the fact of her existence, caved into a bit of stone, and her name.

My father still lives in Burlington, where my family owns property, including some farms north of town and one across the river, in Henderson County, Illinois, just beyond a covered bridge along a former byway that is now a park just east of the highway. The Romkey name was once well known in town. My grandfather was a dashing pilot and developer, and my father, in his earlier days, a pilot and rakish man about town. But now, like the town itself, the Romkeys are receding into the void from which all things come and eventually return.

When I leave Burlington after a visit, I like to avoid 61 and take Highway 99, a little-traveled country two-lane tracing the line between the bluffs and the rich bottom lands that reach all the way to the river.

This is haunted land.

I drive past the monument to Chief Tama, his bones buried a few rods to the right of the highway, sleeping in the midst of a corn field. Past the old stage coach hotel. Past the crumbling stone house on the north end of Middletown, with its “Keep Out!” warning. Past Indian mounds built about the time Jesus, over a fence up a steep climb, a site visited by few, as far as I can tell, beside me and my sons.

I drive past the Iowa Farm, where I played in the corn as a child and looked for arrowheads in a low, sandy spot in the fields, where they pop up in the spring after the earth has been turned. Past the well-kept farmhouses owned by descendants of Dutch farmers who still speak German at home and only recently decided to allow the members of their little country church to watch television. Past the turnoff to Oakville, with a sign saying, “This little town is like heaven to us, please don’t drive like hell through it.”

The present…

My wife, Carol, and I have three sons: Ryan, Matt, and Drew. By day, I am a newspaper editor. By night I write. To tell the truth, I write by day sometimes. I write whenever I get a few minutes to write.

My chief hobbies are reading and playing the violin. I fiddle in a Celtic band, called The Barley House Band, which specializes in traditional Irish music – which is to say, traditional Irish music as interpreted by 21 century Americans. We recently started playing for ceilis – Irish social dances – an incredible thrill for me. As soon as we put up a Barley House website, I will put a link to it here. I’ve also been playing music with Matt, who is a disciple of the great mandolin player Chris Thiele. Every June my family travels to southwest Colorado for the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, which is a lot more than blue grass; if you're interested, check out their website.

My other interests include distance running, reading, Zen, and sailing. Carol and I recently bought a 23-foot sailboat. The boat spends the winter in our barn, but when spring comes we step the mast, rig her, and begin a new adventure.

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