Though this is Bruce McLean’s first novel, he has spent his lifetime writing. He claims that his early experiences include the toughening experience of working as a rivet passer in a shipyard, deckhand on a coastal freighter, logging camp chockerman, and labourer at an oil refinery. But it was what followed that gave him his language chops. He spent thirty-five years as a newspaper reporter and in various editing jobs starting with the Nelson Daily News, Trail Daily Times, the Columbian (New Westminster, BC,) Vancouver Sun, The Province, Globe and Mail, Toronto Telegram, and in London, England at the Croydon Times and Sunday Express. He thinks his storytelling in The Mañana Treehouse was inspired by the memory of his wife, Pauline St-Pierre Dion who spent the last seven years of her life with Alzheimer’s. He became what’s known as a ‘bitter ender’, with her all the way.