Francis X. Atherton (–1986)

"About the Author

Francis X. Atherton, youngest son of J. J. Atherton and Alice Heffernon, was born in Creston, British Columbia at the tail end of his father’s rollicking career as a newspaper publisher. The Creston Review is the only paper founded by the elder Atherton that survives to this day.

The author moved with his family to Calgary and to Vancouver where, at age sixteen, he quit school and launched a lifelong career in the auto industry.

Employed first as a salesman and then in automotive parts, he worked for International Harvester, Studebaker and Volvo Canada Limited, in Vancouver, Edmonton and Toronto.

When he retired from Volvo as Central Canada Regional Manager, in 1977, he had already begun researching the novel that would be based on his parents’ life together.

Atherton died in December 1986, a few months before publication of Tuppence
Ha’Penny Is A Nickel, but not without completing the first draft of a sequel, which follows the family through the turbulent years of the First World War.

He is survived by Eileen, his wife of forty years, and by five children." [source: dustjacket of Tuppence ha'penny is a nickel. Copied from amazon.com]