Nothing ever happens in Yellowpine, Idaho, Ada Reed was told when she agreed to step in as "acting" sheriff, but the murder of a young woman at a gold mine was hardly part of the bargain.
Roger Howell was raised in a somewhat migratory family and mostly in a score of houses in Boise, Idaho Falls, Aberdeen, Cobalt, Butte, La Push, and Baker. There were a couple of wall tents along the way, and a Studebaker for a very short time. Things settled down eventually, and he attended Boise State University, U.C. Santa Barbara, Gonzaga University, and Clemson University. Notwithstanding an international career as a geologist and environmental engineer, Howell has lived and worked all over the western U.S. He has walked the two-track roads and danced and drank and fished the length of the Rockies. Not coincidentally, his stories tend to be set in small towns in the west, and usually take place in the mid-century-a time of prosperity and innocence, but also of paranoia and prejudice. A father of two, he lives in Santa Fe now with his wife and their second-hand dog.
