Every weekday, just before dawn, a commuter train full of businesspeople pulls out of the train station in Santa Ana, California, and rumbles toward downtown Los Angeles. In the “quiet car” of this train is Peter Nielsen, a banker with an office on the 26th floor of a very tall building, near LA’s Union Station. He spends nearly all of his morning commute writing non-fiction true stories with a wide-ranging team of themes and characters. One describes a young boy from the California suburbs who visits his challenging grandfather’s ranch in Utah and ends up running from an angry bull. Another, set in the jungles of Guatemala, tells the tale of a Missionary who is asked to raise an infant from the dead. Still, another describes the actions of a federal agent who brings pizzas to the managers of insolvent banks he has just closed. In turn, these stories are happy, sad, tense, surprising, anguished, and occasionally angry. They take place all over the United States and in Central America. Some describe events that took place in the early 1960s, while others occurred more recently. These wide-ranging stories have important things in common. Each of them is full of love, curiosity, generosity, and faith. They describe the making of a good, wise man.

Peter Nielsen’s All That’s I’ve Seen is available now wherever books are sold.