First and foremost, my thanks go to my earliest reader, my wife Sue, my additional early readers, Mary Engel, Anne Markward, Chuck Greaves, Kevin Graham, and Pat Downs, and Torrey House Press editors Kirsten Johanna Allen and Anne Terashima. Their selfless work made Yellowstone Standoff far better than if it had been the product solely of my own efforts.
With each additional book in the National Park Mystery Series, I respect all the more the crucial role independent booksellers play in helping new writers of fiction like me find a place in the American literary scene. To indie booksellers across the country, and to my hometown team at Maria’s Bookshop in Durango, Colorado, thank you all.
My appreciation goes to the countless scientists dedicated to studying the West’s incomparable wild lands and creatures with the aim of their protection and preservation. In particular, former Yellowstone wolf researcher Molly McDevitt provided me great insight into her work in the field, which I used—and abused—liberally in Yellowstone Standoff.
In conjuring the fictionalized version of Yellowstone’s remote Thorofare region featured in Yellowstone Standoff, I am indebted to Gary Ferguson and Tim Cahill for the precise, dead-true descriptions of the region in their respective nonfiction books, Hawks Rest (republished by Torrey House Press in 2015) and Lost in My Own Backyard. In addition, Fort Lewis College professor of history Andrew Gulliford was forthcoming with his vast store of knowledge of Yellowstone National Park and the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem.
Last, my tremendous thanks go to the rangers and staffers devoting their lives to preserving and protecting Yellowstone National Park and America’s other national park gems.