Elliot MacDonald

Elliot MacDonald has led an interesting life. He was born before there were televisions in every home and there were seldom jet passenger planes flying overhead. Building tree houses and soap box derby car; pet dogs, pet rabbits, frogs, toads and turtles; toy sailboats and home built rockets; climbing trees and hiking in the woods; hopping freight trains and swimming in creeks in the summers; sledding and building snow forts, snowball fights and snowmen in the winters; mowing the lawn and delivering newspapers pretty much defined his childhood. High school was sock hops and girlfriends, homework and girlfriends, mowing the lawn and shoveling snow, working as a busboy and... were girlfriends mentioned? College was interrupted by military service and a year in Viet Nam, where, among many other things, he taught English to a class of wonderful Vietnamese children. Marriage to an amazing woman and raising three kids, working as head of a data processing department in a bank (one of the first in the country); owner operator of a photo store and processing lab and several other full time and part time jobs, including ski instructor, offset printing press operator, retail store manager, and more work in data processing took care of his life until about age 51. Then, with the kids out of school, he and his wife sold the houses, the cars, the furniture; bought a sailboat and sailed off into the sunset. Well, that was the plan at least. They kept running out of money and had to pull in and get work. Elliot (mostly known as Captain Larry back then) worked as a carpenter, electrician, painter, stone mason and a few other things only vaguely defined. Then came retirement. Old will do that to you. And writing. Elliot is the author of The Frugal Mariner website, Creaky Docklines - a book of humorous nautical poetry, Random Thoughts - a book of questionable philosophical and humorous quips, and his first novel, How to Rob a Bank - a Love Story. If you haven't read that yet, you may want to pick up a copy and read it first. This book, Harvesting the Garden of Evil is a sequel to the first and the leading characters are the same - so you may want to get to know them.