John Peters (born 1936 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) is a Canadian writer who grew up as the youngest of eight on a small farm in southern Manitoba. After aining an engineering degree and the University of Manitoba in 1958, he worked in Manitoba, Ontario and BC.

In 1975, along with his wife Frieda, and their three children, they moved to Bangladesh, where he worked at the Bangladesh Power Development Board for over three years, while Frieda volunteered as Marketing Manager at Jute Works, an organization dedicated to helping refuge women. This positive experience launched them into other overseas projects in Indonesia, West Africa, Pakistan and Ethiopia. Between assignments they travelled extensively in Asia, Central and South America, Africa, Europe and Australia. Now retired, they live in Courtenay, BC.

 In November 1980, the United Nations declared that the next decade would bring ‘safe water and sanitation for all.’ Although this lofty goal fell far short of being met, there was a worldwide effort made towards it. Every day in the 1980s, about 200,000 people gained access to a safe supply of drinking water.

Peters was privileged to work on the installation and maintenance of water systems in Ghana and Nigeria during that decade. The work was not without its share of trials and tribulations, however he can never forget the joy on the faces of the villagers when a new well was completed and women lined up to fill their water containers with clean ground water.

 To pass on his experiences and those of the people he met and worked with, he have created a novel. The characters are fictional, except for a few political figureheads. The country of the story’s setting, wedged between Ghana, Nigeria, Niger and Burkina Faso, is a figment of his imagination. The local African people, tribes and places are also contrived and their customs, beliefs and practices should not be construed as accurate. Yet they are all based on general perceptions he gained while working in the two countries.