Something new is coming.

Those of you who follow my work know that I spend a lot of time with old newspapers, courthouse records, and cemetery registers, the quiet evidence that ordinary and not-so-ordinary lives leave behind. The past couple of years, most of that time has gone somewhere new.

I’ve been writing a book. It’s called Everything Was Possible: The World of Charles Patterson McCan, and it’s a work of narrative nonfiction, a true biography, built entirely from primary sources, written to read like a story rather than a reference book. It begins in Washington County, and it goes a long way from home before it comes back.

I’m not going to say much more than that yet. The photographs are still being placed, and a few things are still being finalized. But the book is close, and I wanted you to hear about it here first.

More soon.

— J. LeRiche