In 1989 John Sandford published the first novel in his series of "Prey"
thrillers. He was nearing the end of a long career as a journalist in which he won a Pulitzer Prize and was embarking of what has become a legendary second career writing fiction. Sandford used to come through
Dayton regularly on book tours; he has made a half a dozen appearances on
the program.
In 1999 he came through the area to publicize his 10th Prey novel "Certain Prey." He has published Prey novels every year since that first one. In April he released his 36th installment in that series. I can
always count on him to discuss his craft during interviews. In this conversation he surprised me when he began talking about our fellow Iowan Bill Bryson, Bryson is from Des Moines, we went to the same high
school, John Sandford grew up in Cedar Rapids.
As I was putting together this archival program I remembered that I finally met Bill Bryson in person the following year, in 2000, when he came through Dayton on a tour for his travel book "In a Sunburned Country" and that we had talked about his best selling travel book "A Walk in the Woods." During my conversation with John Sandford we talked about that book so I decided to pull out that Bryson interview to complete our program today with a bonus segment-in this excerpt I was able to bring together four native Iowans on this Best of the Book Nook; John Sandford, Bill Bryson, "Steven Katz" (Bryson's Appalachian hiking
partner) and me.
