About

I write hopeful fiction and true history about the people who bent the world toward good, and the turns we can still take.

How Mission: Butterfly began

The idea took root while I was reading Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Potawatomi botanist. She writes about Indigenous ways of living with the land, including the Haudenosaunee principle of weighing every decision’s effect seven generations ahead, and she shows it is still possible to live that way. What if those lifeways had been given a chance?

Conquistadors, gold rushers, and railroad builders would never have allowed it, of course. But in the 1960s, people were questioning authority, opening to new ideas, and waking up to human impact on the environment. Then, in the early 1970s, came a chance to decide the future of 365 million acres of Alaska. What if we had used that moment to make amends and give Indigenous thinking a try? What if Alaska Natives had been given control of all the public lands in Alaska?

Time travel makes that alternate history possible, and the 1960s are the natural inflection point. I came of age then. People were marching to end a war, to win civil rights, and to protect the environment. All they needed was a few “butterfly breaths” to nudge them onto a different path. I hope readers see that even small choices can have a massive impact.

While researching the novel, I kept discovering people who never made the headlines. A few became the heroes of the novel. Many more didn’t fit, or barely made it in, so I started The Wrong Turn essays to tell their stories.

Where I come from

As a newspaper reporter and editor, I focused on people who were getting things done, often behind the scenes. In health care public relations, I met people who literally saved lives yet were often written off as industry bureaucrats.

Teaching was my last paid job and my favorite. Everyone in my classroom was there to better themselves, and the young people I taught cared deeply about their communities. At the end of every semester, I felt as though I were releasing butterflies whose effects I won’t live long enough to see.

Writing lets me keep sending out butterfly breaths in the form I know best. I’m also experimenting with podcasting, graphic communication, and video.

Home

I was born in Denver, worked in the East and the West, and came back for the mountains and the seasons. I live in central Denver with my wife and daughter, where I get around on foot, by bike, and by bus. My son and daughter-in-law live nearby, and I help care for my grandson, my newest little butterfly.