Russell Cahill

Russell Cahill is a San Francisco born (1938) child of a mixed race family. His Father was a Hawaiian seaman, his mother a descendant of Pilgrims. A former National Park Ranger in Yosemite, Alaska, Washington D.C. and Hawai'i, Russell writes from his home in a forest North of Olympia Washington. His fascination with the native cultures of North America and Polynesia inspired him to write Kolea a story of early Hawai'i and a voyage to North America.

Scott's Ivanhoe was the first novel Russell read and he credits it for his love of historical fiction, naming Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy and Bernard Cornwell's Archers Tale as influences. He has attempted to bring the rich culture of pre-contact Hawai'i to his readers. Russell has climbed, hiked and paddled his kayak through many of the places he writes of. In 1974 he and his late wife and their three children built a cabin in an Alaskan forest using only hand tools. He and his present wife Narda Pierce spend parts of each summer there.

Russell's second book is a memoir of his adventures in the National Parks. "There are a lot of bears in the book as well as a description of a mess I caused in the basement of the White House." The Ranger book will be out in 2016. His third book will be a historical novel about the American west in the early 1800s as seen through the eyes of a Hawaiian seaman.