JUSTICE FOR ALL
Official Website of Author
JUSTICE FOR ALL: THE SEARCH FOR BIG POKER TOM
Based on True Events
NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON IN PAPERBACK, HARDBACK, AND EBOOK!
My Story
In 1984, I ran across an article in American West Magazine that totally captured my attention. "Paiute Revenge" it was called, written by the late Sally Zanjani. I cut it out and put it in my Eastern Sierra file. Every time we went fishing, camping, or backpacking on US Route 395, I pulled it out and read it. And every time, my reaction was the same: "I can't believe this story, so amazing, such intense drama that really happened. I can't believe no one has doine antying with it. It would make such a great movie. Someone needs to do something with this story!" As it turned out, twenty some years later I broke down and decided to give it a try myself. It took me a very long time, but Justice for All: The Search for Big Poker Tom, is the result. It's a historical novel about the events that took place in the spring of 1891 in Bridgeport, California. I spent countless hours researching in libraries, reading microfilm screens of old newspaper articles doing research. Then I began to write, filling in the blanks, creating the rest of the story.
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Thinking I was going to become a National Park Ranger or biology teacher, I started on a biology degree at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, a very long time ago. After a short time at Asbury College, I transferred to UC Berkeley where I completed a bachelor's degree in biology. My life's direction changed, however, during my three-month (which became three-year) honeymoon in Vermont. I decided to go into the ministry and attended Talbot Seminary in La Mirada, California. I served in two large southern California churches, working with jr. highers, then children, then adults, for thirty-six years, before my retirement. I am married to Patty, my much better half, whom I met at Westmont. We have three daughters, who have brought into our lives three terrific sons-in-law and twelve absolutely amazing grandchildren.
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Besides history, I enjoy Southwest landscape and wildlife photography, soccer, my faith, spending time with my famly, all things in the wild, and traveling (Italy in particular, as we have a daughter and family there). And I am now also a proud, bonafide, award-winning member of the Western Writers of America! My book was selected as a 2023 Spur Award Finalist in the historical fiction category! It's hard to believe! We traveled to the WWA Convention to accept the award. I have to pinch myself now and then to comprehend that it actually happened! to me!
My BACKGROUND
MY BOOK
In the spring of 1891, Big Poker Tom, a Paiute Native American from Nevada, left his reservation to find a high-stakes poker game in Bridgeport, California. Only his horse returned, several weeks later. His tribe sent a search party to Bridgeport to look for him.
This is the story of the clues they found, day by day for six days. The evidence escalated the story into an explosive conflict involving Whites, Paiutes, and Chinese, and their justice systems and cultures. Sheriff Michael J. Cody got involved helping them, intending to enforce the US justice system. He tried to keep the peace, his sworn duty, however . . . With two hundred armed Paiutes having gathered to help, the town of Bridgeport and all of its residents were suddenlty in grave danger. Find out how the story resolves, a true story from the pages of history, a story that needed to be told!
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It's now available at Amazon.com in paperback, eBook, and hardback.
BLOG
SOME DISAPPOINTING NEWS
One of the local Yucaipa men who bought my book happens to have a nephew who is in the upper echelon of a major motion picture studio in the Los Angeles area. I have spent a couple of years talking with him about the possibility of their using my book for a six-eight episode streaming serial. He loves the story, with all it's twists and turns, he says, and then with the extra material that "makes it sing!" Talking about this possibility has been exciting, until.....They recently notified me that they had made a decision not to go ahead with that project. A serial like that would cost the studio $80-100 million. Westerns seemed to be making a comeback with the success of Yellowstone, but when Kevin Costner’s three or four part Horizon: An American Saga bombed at the box office, they got skittish and decided they couldn't take the risk. Perhaps a feature film would cost less, I don’t know. Maybe some day! I have a feeling it would do well.
A POSSIBLE SECOND BOOK?
I’ve been working on a collection of short stories and tales, some historical, some closer to being more like tall tales, some mixed, some about pranks. So…more on that later. And let me know if you know of any stories like that that need to be told! Right now I'm calling the book "'Howlin' Howard' and Other Fanciful Tales of Early California," after one of the stories in the collection.
Past events
CALIFORNIA WRITERS CLUB- 2025
2024 EASTERN SIERRA HISTORY CONFERENCE
Sierra Forever (formerly called the Eastern Sierra Interpretive Association) has a history conference in Bishop every October. I have been to the last four of them and have thoroughly enjoyed them. I did a presentation on some of the interesting and unexpected things I turned up in researching and writing my book. The audience was very responsive and I found it to be great fun!
2024 Friends of Bodie
annual dinner
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Every year in Bodie, the beautiful, high elevation ghost town that’s in “arrested decay,” they have a members only special dinner After dinner I did the 2024 presentation with my “The Stories Behind the Story" slide show. Patty and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the seventy wonderful people who support the preservation of Bodie. If you know of any groups that might be interested in seeing this presentation, please let us know. Thank you!