When the book originally came out in 1974, Guthrie telephoned one of the largest book stores in San Diego, asking how his book was doing. The clerk told him that they had placed the book in the front window and it was selling like hot cakes. In fact, the clerk wasn’t sure they had
any left because they had sold so many. Then the book store clerk suspiciously questioned whether Guthrie had really written The Palace Guard. “Of course I wrote it,” Guthrie indignantly responded and drove down to see his book in the front window of the book store. When he arrived and looked in the display window he didn’t see his book and instead saw a strange looking book entitled The Palace Guard. To his disappointment, The Palace Guard in the display window was not the book he had written. It was a totally different Palace Guard, written by someone named Dan Rather.
