“The American West is tempestuous, a tumble, a turmoil, exciting, disastrous, rich, deathly, beautiful, and a place of new beginnings. It’s filled with American Dreamers.
“When I first started writing stories set in this world, my research made it clear that books of the West often got it wrong. They were Anglo-centric, Texas-centric, male-centric, and cowboy-centric. Mostly, they left out women, Native Americans, spiritual seekers, Asians, Latinos, Blacks, French-Canadians, mountain men, mixed-blood people, emigrants, missionaries, Mormons, and everyone else who cut a big figure in the myth or was somehow inconvenient.
“Horses played a bigger role in those books than all the disenfranchised people put together.
“To redress these lapses I have delved into the stories of cavalry wives, warriors, medicine men and women, polygamists, explorers, people of color, and so on. I’ve been fortunate to have as collaborators many of these very people—Western women, Mormons, members of the Shoshone, Crow, Blackfeet, Lakota, Navajo, and Cherokee tribes, mountain-man hobbyists, and other people who filled in conspicuous blanks.
“I wanted to go on the wild adventure, the real one, with American Dreamers. I wanted to leave the old myths in the dust. I wanted to explore this world and write like my hair was on fire. I hope you enjoy the ride.”