Originally from southern Utah, where his family had its roots in hard-rock mining, Fotheringham first began writing news articles in the early 1990s about the flourishing modern-day gold mines in northern Nevada's Carlin Trend. A 1976 graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia's School of Journalism, the former high school English teacher moved to Elko, Nevada, in 1999 to write his novel, Glory Hole.