Mike Decker was born in Moline, Illinois at the beginning of World War II. A Fitting Epitaph is a work of fiction, but it is based on his father-in-law William Davies’ years as a party boat captain and commercial fisherman, and the time Mike spent in the 1960s as a deck hand on Bill’s second boat, “The My Three”. Mike currently lives in California in the Sierra Nevada, with his wife Joyce, to whom all his work is dedicated.