Wherever fate takes us, money makes all the difference, doesn’t it? When a fatherless boy raised in a Nampa, Idaho trailer park graduates from high school, stows his inventory of drugs in the tool box in the back of his truck, hides his cash hoard in the cabin air filter compartment, hugs his mother and heads to California to find a better place to conduct business, he only gets as far as Jackpot, Nevada when a deal goes bad and he awakes on the side of a back road, drugs, phone and the money from his wallet all missing. Meanwhile, what happens to his mother back in Nampa will alter the course of both of their lives. Events of personal destiny and the chain of personal consequence, those little bits and pieces of fate that might be within our control, are always standing on our shoulder, whispering in our ear. We can hear them if we listen. We can tweak them if we pay attention. A decent life in the making. Sometimes our life has a backstory that is far more interesting and dramatic than our own story. Sometimes the chain of personal destiny starts long before we are born. Sometimes the events that set our fate in motion are hidden from us, dark secrets that are supposed to die with our grandparents and parents. And sometimes the chain of personal consequence is so weighty that a gentle nudge here and there isn’t going to do a damned thing. Clint Raskin, the prominent Boise, Idaho embezzlement and financial crimes attorney who figures so prominently in many of our stories, told us about Dewey Joiner, his mother, Tina, and his grandmother, Sandra. The Parkhurst affair was one of the first big cases taken on by the newly-established firm of Armbruster Raskin. Clint made one big mistake, couldn’t do anything about it, regretted it and forgot about it. Until Dewey and Tina showed up in his office decades later. Fletcher and Bublé are longtime friends and collaborators with a large and growing collection of books published. Fletcher is the author, reporter and researcher. Bublé is the watchful editor, sometimes instigator, and reliable source for the incredible, entertaining, insightful and most unusual stories they have researched and written together.