Growing up in Lima, Ohio, and Farmington, Maine, David is a native American who also has putative indigenous ancestry.  Originally aspiring to become a concert pianist until nearly severing his entire right index finger as a teenager, he nevertheless went on to begin study in the conservatory of music at the University of Cincinnati, and there his string bass was snapped in two during a performance when the orchestra pit rose at intermission, catching the scroll of his bass under the lip of the stage.  Shortly after that, his family’s 7-foot Chickering grand piano, on loan to the local high school in Farmington, was destroyed when the legs gave out as it was being pushed across the stage in the school’s auditorium.  Whereas the injured finger never properly healed and since music was plainly a dangerous career choice, he signed up for four years in the Army during the Vietnam war.  After his military service he earned a bachelor’s degree in wildlife management at the University of Maine.  Also holding a diploma in Russian language, his wage-earning career, chiefly in the paper industry, has been bracketed by service as a Russian cryptanalyst in the ASA and self-employment as a Registered Maine Guide, active in fishing, hunting, and recreation.  He has held a host of other roles as well, conferred by home-ownership, fatherhood, and now grandfatherhood.

After completing the novel, The Elephant of Surprise, in 1982, a heartfelt backwoods love story set in the Maine woods and written around his own experiences until then, he laid it aside and deemed it good only for practice.  In the 1990s he was daring enough to make a two-week solo trip through Russia and Ukraine before Putin came to power, and afterward he completed Fire, Wind & Yesterday, a historical novel published in 2017 and set in Ukraine in the 9th century.  In his retirement David has been having a great time pouring his creative energy into fiction.  Cold Morning Shadow, set in South Dakota between 1967-1972, was published in 2020, and in 2023-2024 he resurrected The Elephant of Surprise, which is now in print.  All his published work including short stories and some non-fiction is described in detail at DamnYankee.com.

Feel free to get in touch with the author, woodbury@damnyankee.com, even if only to say Hi.