Going Down River

About the Book

"This is a delightful book for all age groups. It tells of a time when America was just beginning to expand its horizons into the western part of the United States. The book shows the hardships of paddle wheelers and other people on the river. Thanks John Wiskus for a book that has appropriate language. I hope everyone enjoys it, as I did."
-Becky Messer, Wishek, North Dakota

This story starts in the spring of 1849 with the four graves and then when a small woman with "strong features and calming blue eyes" decides to moved what was left of the two families from Iowa out to Montana. It tells of their family adventures on the Mississippi River, life and a winter in Missouri. Adventures up the Ohio River to find a 13 year old blind girl. Lois Agne tried to start a new life in 1849 and recorded their day by day adventures, as others did, of her kids finding wanted poster men and Indians along the rivers, the prairies and the Lewis and Clark Trail: This is the first book of the series tale of the kids "Going Down River." Next the "River Kid Detectives" and they end up kid-napped. To endure life's tragedies and love in an adventure story for teens, adults, and grandchildren from age 8 years of age on up to folks at the young age of 108 years young and also for the little kid in all of us.

After the mystery case of the spooks, the kids get a long interview by Mr Leo Brown of the St. Louis Star Newspaper. The kids get on with their adventure by winning over many of the stern paddle wheel steam boat captains and later the young blind girl. The boy's trail cross again later with the river captain who gave the boys their first five, $5 gold coins. The boys had pulled his ship off the river sandbar with their two-wagon teams. The boys get a visit from the ghostwriter, Mr Long. The kids get a visit from a sheriff and some information on the Ohio bank robber. The kids get to visit a robbed Wells Fargo Bank in Ohio. The kids will soon have 57 new wanted posters and is it he, that feller in the card game, on board the stern steamship 'The Boyer I,' is he a twin?

This is all gleaned from a collection of some spotted, faded, parts un-readable, I think that is peanut-butter and jelly sticking those three pages together through thirty-nine journals now molded into the kid's first of the series of storybooks. About the kids hiding in the trees, finding bank robbers, robbers of Army guns - gunrunners, and the kids with a 13-year-old blind girl, who became blind at age 9, and many folks enjoying Jail Bird food. Later finding a gang of the Army payroll {in GOLD} paddle-wheeler steamboat robbers. Lois, the mother, from her journals and journals written by the kids, who are, Bobby age 13, John age 13, Jerry age 12, and Kathy age 11, almost. From the journals of John's Uncle James West and the stern steam paddle wheeler Captain John Fourbears Tipton Duffy. The stories about this family have been passed on down for over seven generations about the family and kids' real life and adventure along the great Lewis and Clark lower Ohio River, the Mississippi River, and up the Missouri River trail. Their personal lives, the people whom they crossed paths and where their lives path crossed in life with some folks, many times. Many journal entries are now flowing into this story. I am sure you all will be able to personally relate to the story of the people and their forthcoming choices and then stop, and may explain things to children, or just sit back in deep thought (for a while), and then you may decide. So much was recorded that it took three books (about 980 pages) just to cover part of the details of the last nine months of 1849. Some words, spellings, word use, etc. were all gleaned right from the real entries. This book has so many good little few day's short stories; you are bound to enjoy some of them.

Please be on notice that some of those hotels, café's, and places are still open for business today. Also today that some descendants of the people, who have written the journals back in 1849 into 1855, still live in Forsyth, MT; St. Louis, MO; St. Charles, MO; Fort Madison, Iowa; Columbus Junction, Iowa; Tipton, Iowa; and in many other river towns and areas in the books. The following story series is based on and tries to follows the journals, as a guide, after the 4 GRAVES, on their new adventure down to and up along the Lewis and Clark trail going up the great Missouri River. Because some descendants are still living today and because of the large inheritances many have received, I have been requested to change some of the actual names of the people, who wrote in the journals, in this story.

This book is classed as fiction, while it still retains the general integrity and historical setting of the 1850's and the author's personally owned journals as a story guide. However any references to any specific time, dates, letter and e-mailed items from the last 12 years of research request received of any towns, events, photos, images, real people, or real places are intended only to give the story a true historical reality. Any names, characters, and incidents are the product of the author's interpretation and were used fictitiously. Any resemblance, if any, to any real life fashions, places, any actual recorded court file or person is purely coincidental, with out any intended malaise.

About the Author

John A. Wiskus was born and raised in a small town in Iowa. He attended grade school in Iowa and completed the last two years of high school in Texas. Each summer he worked with heavy equipment and custom farming. While in high school in Texas he also attended Amarillo Jr. College before joining the Air Force and attended more college.

His USAF military career was spent in aircraft in-air refueling, teaching aircraft electronics, two trips to Vietnam, and three years in Japan with the Security Service. His last few years were teaching active duty, Guard, and Reserve Disaster Preparedness. He traveled all around the world for most of his twenty years with the Air Force before returning to civilian life. Then he worked for one year for the US Navy ET School, three years electronics for the US Army, and then back to special electronics project for the US Air Force. In 1988 he turned his attention to the faded, spotted, spots stuck together 'Journals' and researched the Old West. He has studied them and listened to stories, the Indians, river ships, and hardships the settlers of the 1850's had to endure.

He now enjoys retirement and 12 years of writing about the kids. He lives in the beautiful Beaver Valley, on a farm by a lake in south central North Dakota. He is surrounded by the prairie animals and loves the lakes of the western prairies of our great land. John won't talk much about his military years. He has 4 grown children and 8 grandchildren. He simply puts it that the kids' stories are his work of love. This is John's first full-length story, and he is finishing more kids' books.

He now has had the privilege of sharing the lives of each one of the kids; folks next to them, crying with them and feeling emotionally touched by them. To write about the kids, and the men and women brave enough to face up to the challenges that dared them to take them to the next step, is a emotional and pleasant experience. Their daily hard life, which would be hardships to us, just rolled right off of them. He had to cry, love, and laugh with the kids' affected people.

He laughed a lot with Kathy as he related her as to his own daughter, and with his three boys of his four children. The story tells how folks had to endure life's tragedies and leap for joy over their victories. John wrote the story series for young adults and grand parents to read to the young and old. As in real life, some folks die, but the others must go on. They must go on with their own dreams of love and if they persisted with the defiance of evil, will bring us all back together.