The End of Country (39 page)

I
never intended to write this book. In fact, back in the summer of 2008, when I began work on it, I had more or less decided that I was never going to write anything ever again. Nearly three decades of writing for newspapers and magazines, in a career that had never provided more than a meager and unreliable income, had left me frustrated, angry, and pretty much dead broke. I had decided that I was going to chuck it all and go work for Walmart as a greeter when my wife, Karen Phillips, and one of my oldest and dearest friends, Sharon Guynup, persuaded me to take one last stab at my career. Sharon can be very persuasive, and Karen can be downright intimidating, so I agreed.

To my utter surprise, there was great interest in the proposal, and I was overwhelmed. I had no idea how to even begin to evaluate the offers of representation I was now getting. I reached out to a guy I respected, a guy I had worked with and who, unlike most guys in the magazine world, knew what it was to work, and whom I knew I could trust, A. J. Baime, then articles editor at
Playboy
.

I knew A. J. had just written a book that was doing better than just all right, a riveting tale about the rivalry between Ford and Ferrari during the heyday of Le Mans, a book called
Go Like Hell
, and I had heard through the grapevine that he had gotten a pretty good deal for the book and an even better one for the movie rights. I explained my predicament to him. “I’m in way over my head, A. J.”

“Who are you talking to?” he asked.

I started reciting the list of agents in reverse order, the most recent first. I didn’t make it any farther than the third name on the list—the Waxman Agency—when A. J. stopped me. “They represent me,” he said. “They did a great job. Who are you talking to over there?”

“Byrd Leavell,” I said.

“Don’t go anywhere, I’ll call you right back.”

A few hours later, Byrd and I spoke on the phone. I told him that he was my agent.

Thanks to A. J., I had made a good choice. Over the next few weeks, Byrd worked tirelessly—and with more patience than I had any right to expect—to turn the emotional but unformed query I had written into a full-blown proposal of which we could both be proud.

I was still trying not get my hopes up when the first offers came in. I had one for twice what I had imagined the book might possibly be worth, but Byrd urged me to remain calm. “Let’s see what else comes in,” he told me. He knew what he was talking about. Soon, two major houses were bidding against each other, and all I could do was sit on the sidelines and wait until they finished going at each other. Had it not been for Byrd’s patience, his guidance, and his skill, this book never would have happened.

In the end I decided to go with Random House, because the editor, Tim Bartlett, seemed to have an almost preternatural calm about him, at least on the telephone. He struck me as the kind of guy who could be patient enough to guide an aging neophyte like me through the daunting process of writing a book. He was originally from Pennsylvania, too, assuming you count Philadelphia as part of the commonwealth. There were going to be obstacles. I’d have to become at least conversant in Mainline WASP if I really wanted to communicate with him, but that was okay. I’ve always been adaptable. And given the fact that I had spent a good portion of my career working with editors who were either flamboyantly overwrought or downright
nasty when they were working, I was really looking forward to his steadiness.

Over the past two years, Tim has not disappointed me. He has been a stellar editor, and whatever the failings of this book, they’re all mine. This book is incomparably better as a result of his tireless work. But Tim did not do it alone, either. He had the help of remarkable fellow editors at Random House, especially Millicent Bennett and Andy Ward. We also had the direction of Susan Kamil and Tom Perry, not to mention the tireless work by the assistants at Random House, Jessie Waters, Ben Steinberg, and Tim’s former assistant Lindsey Schwoeri, whom I believe I single-handedly burned out. A special note of thanks goes to Emily DeHuff, who, armed only with her copyediting skills, managed to hack a trail through my dense prose that readers could follow.

I owe a deep debt of gratitude to friends such as Leopold Zappler, Dennis McGrath, and Paul Gallagher, who patiently read the manuscript and made insightful suggestions. I need to thank Doug Heuck of
Pittsburgh Quarterly
magazine, who gave me a chance to explore some of the larger issues of this book in print. And I am forever in debt to my wife and my four children, the older ones, Miriam and Yona, and the younger ones, Seneca and Liam, who endured my lunacy as I obsessed over this project.

But most of all, this book is the direct result of the generosity of spirit of the people in it, people like Bill Zagorski and Ray Walker at Range Resources and Professor Terry Engelder at Penn State, who has given generously of his time to try to make me understand the mechanics and mysteries of the Marcellus. That there is a book at all is a testament to the character of the people along Meshoppen Creek, people like Roger Williams and his wife, Jean, and Anne Stang, and Victoria Switzer, and especially Ken Ely and the love of his life, Emmagene. And of course my mother and my sister. In the end, this book is theirs.

Seamus McGraw lives in the woods of northeastern Pennsylvania with his wife, his four kids, and his as-yet-unnamed flintlock rifle. He’s a frequent contributor to a number of publications, including
Playboy
and
Pittsburgh Quarterly
, and his work has appeared in
Reader’s Digest, Maxim, Radar, Spin
, and
The Forward
. He has won a number of journalism awards, including honors from the Associated Press Managing Editors, the Casey Foundation, and the Society of Professional Journalists. McGraw is currently working on a documentary about his family’s experiences as they unfold.