K D Bradshaw is sixth-generation West Virginian who was born and raised in Huntington. His family's legacy includes old-time Baptist ministers who often traveled in circuits to preach at remote churches in the mountain hollows bordering Kentucky along the Big Sandy and Tug Fork Rivers. These religious doctrines influenced every facet of life and, to a large degree, molded his future: a path that often followed extremes in the search for meaning and fulfillment. He has worked at logging, driving a truck, route sales, data entry and managing a small family business. His service in the Marine Corps took him to Central America at the height of the civil war in Nicaragua where he became attentive to both the language and culture of a people who had a long history of dealing with empires.

Yet the consequences of one's decisions are often unexpected, and the trajectory of who we are becoming goes unnoticed, sadly, until it is too late. It was Reinhold Niebuhr who commented that as humans we cannot foretell the future, but are still responsible for it.

It is living with the results of this truth that compels him to write. A degree in English, studies in Biblical Hebrew and Jewish Religious Philosophy laid the groundwork for a new interpretation of the book of Jonah, a story that has been dealt with only shallowly by the established commentators.

His novel, The Journal of Francis Darling, is based upon events that occurred during Nicaragua's last civil war and that have rarely been touched by literary works, no more than a footnote labeled under "the Iran-Contra Affair." It is a period of history worth revisiting, as the lessons learned apply to America's foreign policy today.

K D Bradshaw currently lives with his wife and two dogs in Fayetteville, West Virginia on five acres of land where he enjoys woodworking, building wooden boats, gardening and fly fishing.