Gary Jennings - The Journeyer

Where the erudition came from, however, was something of a mystery.

Born in the little city of Buena Vista, Virginia, the son of Glen E. and Vaughnye Bayes Jennings, nothing in his upbringing suggested a belletristic future. The story was his birth occurred on the second floor of a movie theater that his parents owned. The theater burned down—and so it went.

The family moved to New Jersey in the early ’40s and he graduated from Eastside High School (of Lean on Me fame) in Paterson, New Jersey. He attended the Art Students League in Manhattan, but from that point all formal education ceased. Jennings was completely self-educated.

Responding to an ad in a New York newspaper at age seventeen, he was hired as an office boy in an advertising firm. It was a steady climb up the ladder in advertising; he thought he might use his artistic talent, but ended up as an account executive.

After a break to serve in the Korean War, where he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal—a decoration rarely given to soldier-reporters—and a personal citation by South Korean President Syngman Rhee for his efforts on behalf of war orphans, he returned briefly to advertising. It was during this period that he met Bill W

The desire to write was so great that he decided to cut the strings and write full time. New York was not an affordable place and he had always wanted to go to Mexico … so he did. He left everything and moved to San Miguel de Allende. There he continued his freelance writing, wrote ten children’s books, edited Gent and Dude magazine, and wrote two novels.

During his twelve-year stint in Mexico, Gary became fascinated with the Aztecs. He learned Spanish, haunted archaeological digs, and immersed himself in the Aztec history and culture. There he wrote Aztec, his breakthrough novel. He wrote about the Aztec world with vivid intimacy, with an unprecedented authenticity, and with literary grace. He brought something more to that story, something that would inform all four of his subsequent novels: an exotic, often erotic wit, based on characters possessed by an irrepressible Rabelaisian lust for life, stylish charm, and zany joie de vivre. His men and women were eccentric, roguish, and unabashedly bawdy. Jennings enlivened their adventures with an energetic prose, an electrifying power, and a narrative drive that many believed unique to historical fiction.

After leaving Mexico, he stayed briefly in Texas, then in Marin County, California, and finally back home to the Shenandoah Valley in Buena Vista, Virginia. He stayed there until the mid ’90s and then returned to New Jersey to be near his oldest friends.

Gary Jennings literally roamed the world in the course of researching The Journeyer, for which he faithfully duplicated the travels of his hero Marco Polo. He did the same in the process of researching Spangle, during which he traveled with a circus troupe. He went back to Europe to continue his research and finished Raptor, a book on the Goths. Demand for more of Aztec finally convinced him to write Aztec Autumn and to prepare the material for then-unnamed books on the Aztecs.

During 1998 and 1999 Gary collaborated with a composer and lyricist and wrote a musical play based on the life of Joe Hill, a union organizer his father had met in Paterson, New Jersey. He also compiled research for a book set amid the hanging gardens of Babylon and was putting together a book of his short stories.

Gary died on Friday the 13th of February 1999, passing quietly while watching late-night television. He had had a dinner party planned for the next evening with his agent, his doctor, and his two best friends. He is greatly missed by friends and fans alike.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE JOURNEYER

Copyright © 1984 by Gary Jennings

All rights reserved.

First published in the United States by Atheneum and published simultaneously in Canada by McClelland and Stewart Ltd.

A Forge Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

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New York, NY 10010

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eISBN 9781429999946

First eBook Edition : February 2012

First Forge Trade Paperback Edition: March 2010