Mary's right about the book's containing some of my pictures of Forum
members who attended the 2011 conference at Hannibal. One picture (p. 45)
shows them in the Mark Twain Cave, near the spot where Pat Ober delivered an
impromptu talk about Dr. Joseph Nash McDowell attempt to petrify his dead
daughter. The combination of Pat's always somber countenance and the
proximity of the grisly experiment's site made for quite a creepy
experience. (Pat can be seen in a green shirt, appropriately lurking in a
shadow at the back of that picture.)

A second picture on the same page more clearly shows Tim Champlin looking at
a map of the cave outside its entrance. That picture is very appropriate for
this book, as Tim is the author of the second volume in Voyageur Press's
regional author's series: _The Wild West of Louis L'Amour: An Illustrated
Companion to the Frontier Fiction of an American Icon_. His book will be
released on August 1, according to the book's Amazon page
(http://www.amazon.com/Wild-West-Louis-LAmour-Illustrated/dp/0760346887/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1426528015&sr=1-1).
With luck, Tim will have some advance copies when he attends this year's
Hannibal conference in July. If you're interested in Louis L'Amour or
western fiction, be sure to talk to Tim at the conference. (If you don't
know what he looks like, look at page 45 of the Mississippi book.)

Incidentally, Tim also has a second book coming out later this year--a novel
titled _Mark Twain Speaking from the Grave_ (I think I have that right). It
reveals the unknown story of what became of Mark Twain's long-lost wax
recordings. He may have advance copies of that book, too, in time for the
Hannibal conference. It's hard to imagine a more appropriate place to
introduce book, as Hannibal, the cave, and the Mississippi River figure
prominently in his novel.