Steam dominated the railways of the world for a hundred years,
but the powerful marriage of internal combustion and electricity gradually pushed steam aside. By the end of the 1950s, steam was fading fast and diesel locomotives were dominating. The old romance of living steel and tough men would not go quietly. On a small backwater sub-branch of the Canadian Southern Railway, the men of the old and the new collided. Love, hate, ambition and intrigue came together to end in tragedy. Ex-Mountie Mike Donovan, hoping for quiet semi-retirement as a railway cop soon discovered that sleepy backwater Ontario provided more excitement and mystery than he thought possible. As Donovan digs deeper, he finds killers are not always evil and victims not always deserving as the old motives of lust, jealousy, love and fear play out their deadly dance. In the end he finds, in spite of all, love wins.

Don Hayward was born in Sudbury Ontario in 1946. He grew up at a hydro-electric generating site on the Spanish River, surrounded by the natural world of the Canadian Shield hard rock country. This is the location for Echo of the Whip-poor-Will. Don resides in Goderich Ontario