Meet the Author
Be it fiction or fact, Dean Gabbert loves to write about rivers.
He's the author of two Mississippi River novels, The Log of the Jessie Bill (1993) and Let the Lower Lights be Burning (2002) and this is his latest effort, a collection of river stories entitled Brown-Water Boating.
Spanning 45 years, the stories make take you to places you've never seen before. The Mississippi—both Upper and lower— is well represented, as you might expect. Then there's the Atchafalaya in the deep South, the St. Croix in the far North and the Ohio, the Missouri, the Illinois, the Tennessee, the Cumberland and the Kanawha in between.
Dean's river writings have earned him two awards: the 2006 James V. Swift Prize in Maritime Literature from the Herman T. Pott National Inland Waterways Library, St. Louis; and a 1993 Public Service Commendation from the U.S. Coast Guard.
Meet the Team
"Producing a book takes teamwork as well as talent," Dean said. "Marilyn Candido is our marketing specialist; Jack Simpson, a veteran river journalist, is the publisher; Terri Lieder has been a graphic designer for 30 years and this is her first book cover, which we think is a winner; and Sandra Gamal, our back-of-the-book indexer, is a Texan who has spent most of her years in Egypt working for the American University in Cairo Press.
Dean and Marilyn are also co-authors of a new Nauvoo, Illinois, history published in 2006 by the Nauvoo Historical Society. Its title is Nauvoo: A History Featuring the Paintings of Lane K. Newberry.
Marilyn, her husband, Sal, and their four sons were named Hancock County's 2006 Great American Family by the Home and Community Education Association. Marilyn is also marketing manager for her family's web design business, fastwebnow.com, and serves many community organizations as a volunteer.
