Yes. Long before schools started assigning creative writing projects. I was nine or ten; it was a typical story about a young WWI pilot and his adventures, but turned by the time I reached the end, the pilot dying and the last line a question: "What was it all for?"

Extremely important, I’ve lived in St. Louis for most of my life, know its streets, parks, its feel, the smell of hops wafting up Pestalozzi street from the brewery, the small corner taverns, the airport expansion leveling and paving over the streets of my childhood, all of it serves as a backdrop to the novel, especially the homes being torn down .

A central conflict occurs when the main couple, Susan and David, argue about what is important. Susan wants to visit museums as well as explore the outdoors. For David, however, escape to the wilderness is essential to his well-being, and when anxious, he becomes almost obsessed with that escape. Each phase of the conflict is mirrored in the locations: St. Louis, Canada, Wyoming, San Diego, Mexico. Also, of course, the river itself is a metaphor, their lives splitting and then flowing back together.

My wife gave me the story idea and originally I wrote from the male point of view. But it soon became one-sided and therefore bordering on one-dimensional. Susan needed to develop as well. Once her point of view appeared, the novel took off. Their journeys were set. Apparently, it wasn’t too difficult for me to write from the female point of view, at least based on reader comments such as the following: “Jeffrey Penn May possesses something rare as a male writer. I usually avoid fiction with romantic angles written by men, as most generally do not accurately capture a woman's perspective and thoughts on relationships and emotions as I believe they need to be captured to make a truly entertaining and believable story. However, Jeff describes the often heartbreaking sensitivities, pain, fears, and dilemmas of the female psyche and describes them in ways that I can relate to as a woman - not a man's view of what he thinks she might be feeling.”