I was brought up in Milford, Ohio, just to the east of Cincinnati. I am the second youngest of seven children in my family. My father was a general contractor who built homes for many decades. In my youth, I worked for him as a 'gopher', as in: 'go-fer-this' and 'go-fer-that'. I suppose it was this background that inspired my main character's apprenticeship to his father, the miller.