William Dietrich is back with another fast-paced new adventure—one that brings together Norse mythology, the American wilderness, and a swashbuckling explorer in an irresistible page-turner.
Ethan Gage, the hero of Napoleon's Pyramids and The Rosetta Key, just wants to enjoy the fruits of victory after helping Napoleon win the Battle of Marengo and end an undeclared naval war with the United States.
But a foolish tryst with Bonaparte's married sister and the improbable schemes of a grizzled Norwegian named Magnus Bloodhammer soon send Ethan on a new treasure hunt on America's frontier that will have him dodging scheming aristocrats and hostile Indians.
In 1801 newly elected president Thomas Jefferson, taking office in the burgeoning capital of Washington, D.C., convinces Ethan and Magnus to go on a scouting expedition—one that precedes that of Lewis and Clark—to investigate reports of woolly mammoths and blue-eyed Indians.
The pair have their own motive, however, which they neglect to share with the president: a search for the mythical hammer of the Norse god Thor, allegedly brought by fugitive Norsemen to the center of North America 150 years before Columbus. Can the hammer control thunder and lightning? Is there a core of truth to this myth?
Ethan's journey takes him across the Great Lakes to country no white man has seen, but not before he becomes entangled with a British temptress, a comely captive, a French voyageur, and a landscape as breathtaking as it is perilous.
Ancient Norse runes will lead him to his most fantastic discovery yet—and to wonder, danger, mystery, and sorrow that will test every ounce of wit and skill Gage can muster. The Dakota Cipher is another exciting adventure by a writer who has quickly become one of America's most beloved and inventive thriller masterminds.
William (Bill) Dietrich's historical and action thrillers have been translated into 28 languages. Dietrich is also a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, nonfiction author, and college professor of environmental journalism. He has won the Washington Governor Writer's Award and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award.
He currently is exciting readers with his Ethan Gage Adventures, a series featuring an imperfect American adventurer who is not only a protege of the late Benjamin Franklin—but also a gambler, sharpshooter, treasure-hunter and romantic, who manages to get into plenty of trouble with women. Ethan's story entwines with Napoleon Bonaparte's, whom he first meets in Napoleon's Pyramids and is later allied to and odds with in The Rosetta Key and The Dakota Cipher. A fourth novel for the series is in the works.
Dietrich also wrote the Roman-era historical novels Hadrian's Wall and The Scourge of God as well as the earlier thrillers Ice Reich, Getting Back, and Dark Winter.
His book-writing began with The Final Forest: The Battle For The Last Great Trees of the Pacific Northwest and Northwest Passage: The Great Columbia River. A collection of nature essays that first appeared in The Seattle Times is titled Natural Grace. He wrote the text for the Art Wolfe photo book On Puget Sound and essays for books on Skagit and Whatcom counties and Fidalgo Island, his home stomping grounds in the state of Washington. He writes and speaks frequently on the environment.
Dietrich's love of history and fiction was nurtured when growing up in Tacoma. He caught the journalism bug when studying at Fairhaven College and Western Washington University (WWU), where he married his wife Holly. Journalism jobs followed in the Northwest and Washington, D.C., including covering the eruption of Mount St. Helens for the Vancouver, Washington Columbian and the Exxon Valdez oil spill for The Seattle Times. Bill was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and the recipient of National Science Foundation fellowships that got him to Antarctica and the South Pole, which inspired his first novel.
His first book wasn't started until he was 38, and the first novel—roughed out on an icebreaker—wasn't underway until he was 45. Some men get a sports car in midlife; Bill wrote about Nazis.
In 2006 he began teaching and advising a student magazine called The Planet at his alma mater, WWU. He feels fortunate to have been able to bounce between the fiction and journalism worlds and to be reenergized by his students.
He and Holly live on the edge of Washington's San Juan Islands within eyeball distance of three national parks, but Dietrich loves visiting great cities and crawling around old ruins. He has two grown daughters and can see bald eagles, herons, and raccoons from his office window.
