(photograph found in the red-spangled filing cabinet at Hardiner Hollow)

What little we say we know about Harry Hardiner's life before 1989 mostly comes from the man himself—and so little has been verified to this day that we can do little but take him at his word. 

Harry Hardiner's book jacket biography only changed once: in the few posthumous editions of his work, the original "Harry Hardiner grew up in Bookbright, Tennessee," became, "Harry Hardiner grew up in Bookbright, Tennessee. He is missing, presumed dead." The writer was notoriously tightfisted with his personal information, and besides this biography, most information about his early years comes from his interviews with Rex Patch.

To hear Harry Hardiner tell it, he was born in Bookbright, Tennessee, in 1962, the third son of Morgan and Dove Hardiner. His brothers Buddy and Russ were older, and then there was his younger brother Ronald. Harry Hardiner had very little to say on the subject of his direct family, other than his father being "hard, but honest." 

Of more interest to Harry was a family friend, a Judge Ernest Crater (apparently no relation whatsoever to the other Judge Crater), who spent his Tuesday nights in the Hardiner kitchen, eating with the family. Crater was evidently a world traveller: he would regale the Hardiners with stories of Paris and Singapore, tales of revenge and unspoken magic, tales of love and heartbreak, quaint portraits of folk beliefs and the charming locals. These stories sank their teeth in to the young Harry—he describes his time with Judge Crater as the most colorful moments of his childhood, which was otherwise marked with frustrating schooling, fire and brimstone Christianity, and no small amount of hard labor in the fields. Hardiner says Judge Crater was killed in a plane crash when he was 11 years old, and that was the day he decided to become a writer: he was overtaken by a jag of crying when he realized that there would be no more stories, and whatever details the judge had left out could never now be revealed. 

This thought would prove to be a recurring one for the writer as he evolved, and especially as he started serious work on his Rosewire series: what happens to an event after it's passed? 

The haunting philosophies that spun out of this train of thought would inform most of Hardiner's work, and most likely played a large part in his decision to remain out of the limelight. Rex Patch suggests that Harry Hardiner always knew he was writing "at the wrong time." Dr Patch says, "I believe Harry gave himself an out. He was a brave soul, always a brave soul, and very convinced of his work, but he never thought himself unvanquishable. He knew he'd be extinguished. I think if the world knew about him as little as possible, then he could fail, and no one would be any the wiser. I think he always planned on reviving the work later on, later on in life, later into his life, and that's why to this day I don't believe that he would hurt himself. He needed more time, to build his case. In the meantime, he could fizzle without reprisal." If that's true, and I for one am inclined to believe Dr Patch since he spent so much time with the man and his work, well, it's understandable. Harry Hardiner was never a success story. Looking back on his decisions is sometimes confusing and sometimes frustrating, but it's never inconsistent. 

This man came out of a very small town, a population under 1000, to a strict religious farming family—and he dreamed for more. He never felt as though he belonged there in Bookbright with Morgan, Dove, Buddy, Russ, and Ron. He did, however, feel as though he belonged behind the blank page, setting down stories in case he ever had his own plane crash, examining details from angles you might find unconventional or even frivolous, slowing down events and dissecting their entrails. Once he's gone, those details will be forever unknown. If you track his thought processes and what could have impacted them as he developed, it does all hang together.

The problem is, none of it's true.

Well, let's give the man the benefit of the doubt: he was born somewhere, to someone, and most likely had some family. He exhibited an intimate knowledge of farm life in his works, and a steady hand with small-town politics (although his urban milieu also seemed pretty spot-on). There's no reason to doubt someone in his childhood told wonderful stories, and perhaps that someone died.

But take a second to check Google Maps for Bookbright, Tennessee. You know what, I'll save you the trouble, because sometimes it takes a really long time to load—you won't find it. There is no Bookbright, Tennessee, there is no King County, there has never been a Tennessee judge by the name of Crater. 

In fact, there is no certificate of live birth for a Harry, Harold, Henry, or Harrison Hardiner in the year of 1962. Good luck finding one at all. Better minds have tried.

Other details he shared with Patch and others don't check out. He told Hi and Hattie Kerlin, owners and operators of the original Pinkum Press, that he had gone to summer camp in Pinkum, Georgia. There is no Pinkum in Georgia. He claimed to have run away to New Orleans at the age of 17 to live there with a woman named Rosalyn Clave and her son Piers. Knock yourselves out if you want to track down records of the Claves of New Orleans. He said the suitcase containing all of his work to date, including two novels, was stolen from a Manhattan bus station the day he moved to New York. He never filed any crime report or remarked on its theft until nearly a decade after the fact.

All of this is not to say to not trust the man, or think of him as a con artist. In fact, I think it goes right back to Judge Crater's crater. The smoking remains of a man so dear to him deserve some respect—and so Harry Hardiner changes his name in the retelling, but keeps the details the same. I know I'm making a big leap here and putting a lot of blind faith in a man who created works of fiction for a living, but it seems to be in line with his character... as I understand it.

Bookbright could be any number of small towns along the Appalachian trail, and the same could be said for Pinkum with its "white mountain" that Hardiner claimed to watch from his camp cabin. Judge Crater may not even have been a judge, but perhaps a doctor or a water commissioner—someone of high standing who had travelled in his youth and who shared those stories around a dinner table. In fact, there may have been multiple Judge Craters—this Ernest that Hardiner speaks about may well have been an amalgam. Just... Bear with the man, and his tendency towards obfuscation. I cannot prove it, but I truly believe this comes out of an impulse to protect the truth from imperfect retellings. 

At any rate, we are about to cross out of Bookbright and into the readily verifiable.