When you write a book, you often work very closely with people you’ve never met–and one of the great pleasures of my book touring has been getting the chance to meet some of them. As I sit here in my hotel room in Temple, TX and catch up with my email and google searching (the obsession of all authors, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise), I see I can now introduce you to two such people, without whose hard work the visual aspects of the book would never have come together.

One is Michael McMillan, who runs the Fred Harvey yahoo discussion group, and has such an amazing collection of Harvey postcards–which he allowed me to use for the book–that he now has his own Harvey site that allows you to compare old postcards to what is there now. And, last night at the Frisco Heritage Museum–at a wonderful event co-sponsored by the Museum of the American Railroad–I finally got to meet Michael, a terrific guy and a wonderful Fredhead. Here’s the blog-post he just wrote about our meeting. Great to be able to attach a face to those hundreds of emails and jpg downloads, Michael, and thanks again for all your help.

I also came across a sweet local newspaper piece in the Peabody, KS Gazette-Bulletin about a woman from Florence who helped me track down some of the most arresting images in the book of Harvey Girls, which were in the Florence Harvey House collection but had mostly been available as copies of copies. Jackie Sigwing helped me track down the original photos and had wonderful scans made so we could use them in the book.

Here are two images that got into the book because of Michael and Jackie

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