David Belden is an Englishman living on the edge of the Catskills. He has worked as a religious volunteer in India and Ethiopia, a carpenter in England and America for twenty years, a college teacher and currently a corporate business writer. He has a doctorate in sociology from Oxford University, an ex-wife, a house which appears to be covered in fish scales, a severe reading habit and a tendency to absent-mindedness. He lived 30 of his first 32 years in communal houses, first religious then socialist/feminist, not to mention boarding school and college dorms, but forsook the communal life for a twenty-year year nuclear love affair with Debi Clifford, met by change on holiday in San Francisco, with whom he is raising a son, Rowan, and intending to celebrate a golden wedding and new siding on the house, whichever comes first. His dream is to do nothing but write books that are true (or truish), teach interseing people, make curious but entertaining objects, travel with Debi and Rowan and do good. But at the moment these activities have to be squeezed into about every other Thursday and the odd weekend.