Coming July 2006 :: Whiskey Creek Press
Phoenix

About Richard Satterlie

After spending 24 years as Professor of Biology at Arizona State University, Richard moved to the University of North Carolina Wilmington as Frank Hawkins Kenan Distinguished Professor of Marine Biology.  He has published over 60 articles in scientific journals and edited books, all in his research area, Neurobiology.  He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of St. Andrews (Scotland) in 1994, and a Guggenheim Fellow in 2002-03.  Phoenix is his debut novel.

Richard’s academic website

Sievert Olafson wants to give up a sure thing—farming the rich soil of Minnesota—to go to college.  His father forbids it, his brothers ridicule him, and his sweetheart refuses to join him.  So what does a seventeen-year-old first generation American do?  Sievert leaves home for the goldfields of the Arizona Territory.  What he finds is a world of contrasts;  a mentor who is his father’s diametric opposite, a young woman who takes him to new emotional heights, and depths, a “do it to them before they do it to you” society that is anything but a sure thing.  His success is stolen, his honesty betrayed, and with the pull of a trigger, his views of right and wrong are altered forever.  But through his wild ride of victories and defeats, a dormant bulb flowers.  It guides him to happiness.  And a second chance at his dream.