Smack in the middle of campaign season, Ross Kane isn’t concerned with attracting voters. He isn’t working to redraw Snohomish County Council boundaries.
“Not my problem,” said Kane, who served on the county council in the early 1990s.
He still cares deeply about issues that were his focus when he held public office: roads, growth management and the environment.
Yet for the past couple years, the Warm Beach man hasn’t spent much time in the political arena. “I’m not going to run for office again,” Kane said last week. Instead, he’s been busy creating a fictional world, and pulling strings in the lives of his Prohibition-era characters.
The 62-year-old Kane recently published “And Wasn’t It Grand,” a novel largely set in the author’s native Everett and in Victoria, B.C. He knows both places to their core.
His story of Hank, a fisherman-turned-bootlegger who wins the love of a woman from Victoria, is infused with local references and places you have probably been.
Readers from this area will find familiar territory in Kane’s book. It begins in Everett with the 1916 labor dispute and shootings now known as the Everett Massacre. Victoria’s Empress Hotel, where my parents honeymooned in 1947, figures prominently in Kane’s love story, which blends factual and fictional names and places.
Woven into the story is the author’s love of the water and boating. Kane and his wife, Helen — she was his Everett High School sweetheart — have lived at Warm Beach since 1982. Once a sailboat owner, Kane has sailed many times to Victoria and the San Juan Islands. The book’s seagoing details, from crabbing and tides to the gray of Puget Sound, are written with a knowing eye.
Kane still goes out fishing on a wooden skiff he built himself. “If you live in this part of the country and don’t go up in the mountains or out on the water, you’re missing the point,” he said.
Prohibition provides drama and danger in the novel. Herald reporter Jackson Holtz’s Sept. 29 story provided a local look at the early 20th century ban on alcohol, which began in Everett with a dry law in 1910. The subject was also covered by filmmaker Ken Burns in his documentary “Prohibition,” which aired recently on PBS.
Kane, a University of Washington graduate with a degree in English, credits many sources for his book, including “The Dry Years” by onetime Everett Community College president Norman Clark. That book was also credited in Burns’ film.
The novel’s main characters are “an amalgamation, different people I grew up with,” Kane said. His family history comes alive in the book’s Norwegian songs and Lutheran worship.
Kane spent much of his career as a writer, but not of fiction.
Before his stint on the Snohomish County Council, Kane worked in social services, and as a grant writer. He also worked for area attorneys and wrote summaries of documents related to the Washington Public Power Supply System. In the early 1980s, after construction was stopped on the nuclear power plants, the system defaulted on more than $2 billion in bonds.
“It was the largest municipal default in U.S. history,” Kane said Friday. “It’s sometimes called the lawyers’ relief act of 1982.”
Kane served on the County Council from 1990 to 1993, representing District 1 in north Snohomish County. He lost his seat to Republican John Garner in a race that pitted his push for growth management against those favoring more development.
He calls himself a liberal Democrat, but Kane nonetheless is concerned about national debt. “You can’t keep spending money you don’t have,” Kane said.
He is troubled by today’s political atmosphere. “I’ll offer advice occasionally, or an endorsement or a check. But it’s gotten so contentious,” Kane said.
On the County Council, Kane served with fellow Democrat Brian Corcoran, who had worked for the late U.S. Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson, an Everett native. “One thing I learned from Brian Corcoran was to find a way to disagree without being disagreeable,” Kane said.
While he sees no candidacy in his future — “I’ve had enough politics for a lifetime” — Kane does hope to write more fiction. He said his Prohibition love story isn’t “War and Peace.”
“I had fun writing it,” Kane said. “I wanted people to have fun reading it.”
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
Novel set in Everett during Prohibition
Former Snohomish County Council member Ross Kane’s novel “And Wasn’t It Grand” is set in Everett and Victoria, B.C., during Prohibition.
The book is available at www.amazon.com; Anabel’s Framing & Gallery, 2531 Broadway in Everett; and Snow Goose Bookstore, 8616 271st St. NW in Stanwood.
For more information, go to http://rosskane.com.
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