Last year, my mother announced she would be throwing herself a birthday party. The event was a command performance, and, since no one in the family wanted to tangle with Mary Anne, we all dutifully arrived at my mom’s independent living facility outside of Denver in July for the festivities.

My mother arranged all the details, right down to the devilishly delicious chocolate cake, since, like most of us, she carries the chocolate-addiction gene.  When it came time for gift giving, she turned the tables, handing out presents to those in attendance: personal possessions she mostly wanted to give to the grand and great-grandchildren. She was 96.

That night, happy with her efforts, she went to sleep with every intention of not waking up. But the next morning, she blinked her eyes open. As she has every day since. Now it’s not that she’s depressed, it’s just that almost all of her friends are dead. And my dad died in 2019. Then the pandemic hit, leaving her mostly alone in her apartment.

In her defense, she rarely complained. “I read the paper,” she explained. “I watch the news. And I read books every day.” Still, she described the lockdown as worse than the Depression and World War II, times that were awful, but where one was not cut off from most human contact.

Which brings me to today. Though my mother thought her birthday party would be her last project, I now know that’s not true.

“I want you to play Eliza Hamilton,” she said on the phone.

I was half-listening at the time. “Wait. What?”

“I want you to play Alexander Hamilton’s wife. I’ll write the script.”

It seems the people at the home were putting together a series of events in honor of the Fourth of July. My mother had just finished reading My Dear Hamilton, a fascinating account of the life of Eliza Hamilton, the Founding Father’s wife.

I wasn’t sure what to say. While I was in plays as a teenager, that part of my life had been packed away for a long time. That changed a few years back when friends talked me into auditioning for a community theater production of Steven Solheim’s Company. When I was offered the part of the acerbic, hard-drinking, thrice-married Joanne, a job that required singing two solos, a spot of tap dancing, and learning to smoke fake cigarettes, I was rather horrified. Still, when the final curtain call was over and my parents sat happily clapping in the audience, I was glad I took the shot.

“Don’t worry about anything. I’ve got a costume.”

“I’m a lot bigger than you, Mom,” I said grasping for a way to say no.

“And I’ll write your lines.”

I had no worries there. My mother earned a college degree from Penn State University, back when women just didn’t do that type of thing. She was a reporter in radio and print in the 1940s, and is the author of several books of historical fiction. Had my mother been born later, I believe she would have foregone marriage and childbearing and would instead be a governor, or a Supreme Court Justice, or President of the United States.

“You will play Eliza in her sixties, long after her husband died,” she said obviously assuming I wouldn’t say no.

“Um…” I could find no easy escape.

“The event is on June 24^th.”

I was quiet for a moment.

“I need a project,” she said. “This will be the last one.”

I have the impression that, if all goes as planned and I don’t do something horribly embarrassing, she will once again take to her bed following the event, close her eyes, and—satisfied with her life—she will hope to drift off. Though, knowing Mary Anne, I wouldn’t be surprised if there will be more projects in the future.

In the meantime, I will put on my gray wig and 19^th century bonnet and practice my lines.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

The past and present collide when a tenacious reporter seeks information on an eleventh century magician…and uncovers more than she bargained for.

WOLF CATCHER

Anne Montgomery

Historical Fiction/Suspense

TouchPoint Press

February 2, 2022

In 1939, archeologists uncovered a tomb at the Northern Arizona site called Ridge Ruin. The man, bedecked in fine turquoise jewelry and intricate bead work, was surrounded by wooden swords with handles carved into animal hooves and human hands. The Hopi workers stepped back from the grave, knowing what the Moochiwimi sticks meant. This man, buried nine hundred years earlier, was a magician.

Former television journalist Kate Butler hangs on to her investigative reporting career by writing freelance magazine articles. Her research on The Magician shows he bore some European facial characteristics and physical qualities that made him different from the people who buried him. Her quest to discover The Magician’s origin carries her back to a time when the high desert world was shattered by the birth of a volcano and into the present-day dangers of archeological looting where black market sales of antiquities can lead to murder.

REVIEW COPIES OF WOLF CATCHER AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

Review/interview requests: media@touchpointpress.com

“Once again the author has created a beautiful story with a powerful message. She took a piece of history and brought it to life.”

Megan Salcido

Wildwood Reads

Find the rest of the review here.

The past and present collide when a tenacious reporter seeks information on an eleventh century magician…and uncovers more than she bargained for.

WOLF CATCHER

Anne Montgomery

Historical Fiction/Suspense

TouchPoint Press

February 2, 2022

In 1939, archeologists uncovered a tomb at the Northern Arizona site called Ridge Ruin. The man, bedecked in fine turquoise jewelry and intricate bead work, was surrounded by wooden swords with handles carved into animal hooves and human hands. The Hopi workers stepped back from the grave, knowing what the Moochiwimi sticks meant. This man, buried nine hundred years earlier, was a magician.

Former television journalist Kate Butler hangs on to her investigative reporting career by writing freelance magazine articles. Her research on The Magician shows he bore some European facial characteristics and physical qualities that made him different from the people who buried him. Her quest to discover The Magician’s origin carries her back to a time when the high desert world was shattered by the birth of a volcano and into the present-day dangers of archeological looting where black market sales of antiquities can lead to murder.

REVIEW COPIES OF WOLF CATCHER AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

Review/interview requests: media@touchpointpress.com

Get your copy where you buy books.

I love rocks. I have collected them my whole life. So, when I was asked to pick a science in college, geology was a pretty easy call. I enjoyed learning about how mountains form and marveled at the tectonic plates that move our continents around ever so slowly. I can’t pass a road cut without trying to identify the colorful sedimentary layers and when I stare at the stars I remember being taught about the solar system and how it formed.

I mention this because after I took three geology courses, the thrill wore off. It wasn’t my love of rocks and minerals that waned, it was how complicated geology had become.

“Today we’ll be talking about cryptocrystalline structures,” my professor said one day in class. He went on to explain complex things I didn’t understand and no longer remember. What I do recall is that I realized I didn’t care. I loved rocks because they were beautiful or fascinating. Perhaps you now think me shallow, but that rocks were pretty was enough for me from then on.

Today, thanks to the Internet, I’m a member of several Facebook pages for mineral enthusiasts. There are thousands of us out there, so I feel a little
better about my rocking addiction. Every day, I look at photographs of lovely specimens from around the world. But recently, things have gotten problematic again.

Take this post, for example: IMO it is a water-worn cobble of plagioclase porphyry: phenocrysts of bladed plagioclase feldspar in an aphanitic basaltic matrix.”

And this one: Mesolite is a tectosilicate mineral with formula Na₂Ca₂(Al₂Si₃O₁₀)₃·8H₂O. It is a member of the zeolite group and is closely related to natrolite which it also resembles in appearance. Mesolite crystallizes in the orthorhombic system and typically forms fibrous, acicular prismatic crystals or masses.

Yikes!

Can’t we just admire beauty without all the scientific mumbo jumbo? One wonders whether the above mineral descriptions are just a bit of braggadocio. Or maybe it’s me. Perhaps, if I’d taken more of those geology classes, I could confidently craft my own long-winded, science-laden description of a clump a beautiful fluorite crystals.

So, do I regret my decision to pass on higher-level geology? Let me think on it.

Doo doo da da doo doo da…

Nope! Pretty works just fine.

The past and present collide when a tenacious reporter seeks information on an eleventh century magician…and uncovers more than she bargained for.

WOLF CATCHER

Anne Montgomery

Historical Fiction/Suspense

TouchPoint Press

February 2, 2022

In 1939, archeologists uncovered a tomb at the Northern Arizona site called Ridge Ruin. The man, bedecked in fine turquoise jewelry and intricate bead work, was surrounded by wooden swords with handles carved into animal hooves and human hands. The Hopi workers stepped back from the grave, knowing what the Moochiwimi sticks meant. This man, buried nine hundred years earlier, was a magician.

Former television journalist Kate Butler hangs on to her investigative reporting career by writing freelance magazine articles. Her research on The Magician shows he bore some European facial characteristics and physical qualities that made him different from the people who buried him. Her quest to discover The Magician’s origin carries her back to a time when the high desert world was shattered by the birth of a volcano and into the present-day dangers of archeological looting where black market sales of antiquities can lead to murder.

REVIEW COPIES OF WOLF CATCHER AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

Review/interview requests: media@touchpointpress.com

My sweetie pie and I have a little place in St. Croix.

“Where?” you ask.

Well, she’s one of the US Virgin Islands. St. John, St. Thomas and tiny Water Island—which is mostly uninhabited and remote— are her sisters, but she is the red-headed step child of the group. St. Croix is not flashy and full of nightlife. Travelers don’t come to party. They come to stare at the sea, which, depending on the side of the island you’re on, is peaceful with serene turquoise waters and white sand beaches, or wildly rough and constantly changing, displaying every color of blue you can imagine.

We are exceptionally spoiled because just outside our back porch a vast swath of sea bordered by green mountains and rolling hills entertains us daily: a moving piece of living art.

Onto this canvas each day come the birds. We have spent the last three decades living in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, so these creatures are different from the ones we’re used to. Everyday, a pair of brown pelicans soars overhead before they fold their wings and dive into the foamy white waves, hoping to snare fish to feed their baby who sometimes flies with them.  

Pelicans resemble prehistoric creatures and perhaps for good reason. Their ancestors go back at least 30 million years, according to fossil records, so they’ve done pretty well on the evolutionary scale. The birds developed a throat pouch that expands when they hit the water. About two-and-half gallons of water rushes in and, if they’re lucky, a fish or two, which get scooped up and gobbled down.

But they only get to keep the meal as long as the frigate birds aren’t around. While these fleet creatures with scissor tails—named after the powerful French Man-of-War sailing ships— can snatch flying fish, tuna, and herring from the surface, unlike other seabirds they don’t have waterproof feathers. So, rather than risk their plumage in the sea, they often attack other birds to steal a meal. Frigates will harass our friends the pelicans, for example, and get them so frazzeled they will throw up their food. But there’s no waste, I promise, because the frigate bird is there to grab the regurgitated fish, snatching the tasty treat in mid-air. Even cooler perhaps, and far less gross, is the fact that frigate birds can fly for months at a time over the ocean and are able to sleep while doing so. How cool is that?

There are also beautiful feral chickens all over St.Croix, birds displaying rust, black, brown, white, and purple-colored feathers, the descendants of chickens that arrived with Europeans five centuries ago. Striking red-combed banty roosters strut about with their harems, plucking bugs and worms from the ground that they ceremoniously give to their hens. The birds are so ubiquitous here that the rooster is the island’s unofficial mascot.

On our last trip, half a dozen chickens would come up to our back porch daily and visit. But this time, not a single one appeared. We wondered why and then spotted an elegant, brown winged bird with a curved beak: a predator that the locals call a chicken hawk. No wonder our feathered friends had fled.

There are other birds—tiny black ones that flit past so quickly you wonder if you imagined them and swift white birds that fight arial battles with one another— but we haven’t been able to identify them yet. All we know is we’re provided with constant avian entertainment each day, a show that makes Netflix pale in comparison.

I’d tell you more—especially about the six-point, white-tailed buck that stared at us from 15 feet away before slipping over a hillside the other day— but there’s an iced glass of sweet, dark rum waiting for me on the porch.

Ah….

The past and present collide when a tenacious reporter seeks information on an eleventh century magician…and uncovers more than she bargained for.

WOLF CATCHER

Anne Montgomery

Historical Fiction/Suspense

TouchPoint Press

February 2, 2022

In 1939, archeologists uncovered a tomb at the Northern Arizona site called Ridge Ruin. The man, bedecked in fine turquoise jewelry and intricate bead work, was surrounded by wooden swords with handles carved into animal hooves and human hands. The Hopi workers stepped back from the grave, knowing what the Moochiwimi sticks meant. This man, buried nine hundred years earlier, was a magician.

Former television journalist Kate Butler hangs on to her investigative reporting career by writing freelance magazine articles. Her research on The Magician shows he bore some European facial characteristics and physical qualities that made him different from the people who buried him. Her quest to discover The Magician’s origin carries her back to a time when the high desert world was shattered by the birth of a volcano and into the present-day dangers of archeological looting where black market sales of antiquities can lead to murder.

REVIEW COPIES OF WOLF CATCHER AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

Review/interview requests: media@touchpointpress.com

Get your copy where you buy books.

People in my household call me Eco Annie. (You know who you are.) The sobriquet comes my way because I take recycling and caring for our planet very seriously.

I was fifteen when the first Earth Day was celebrated, an event coordinated to bring attention to the sorry state of our natural world. Rivers were burning because of the irresponsible dumping of flammable waste, litter clogged our highways, acid rain poured down, damaging forests and water ways and even corroding the steel and concrete on buildings and bridges.

As a kid who grew up at home in the woods, the thought of the massive destruction of the trees and other living creatures upset me. I remember well the day I felt the need to clean the trash from a small stream near my home, and I reveled when the water began to flow free and clear again.

The point is, I worry about our world and what we’re doing to it. The fact that fifty years have passed and we have barely moved forward in protecting our planet is just plain depressing. I mention this so you understand why I feel so strongly about recycling and composting and making Earth-friendly choices in regard to the products I buy.

Which brings me to my current gripe. Why, please tell me, do I have to pay more to be the good guy? Case in point: The other day I went to FedEx to ship a package. The man behind the counter immediately sized up the book I was mailing and pulled out a plastic envelope.

“Oh, wait,” I said politely. “Could I have cardboard instead?” He stared at me for a moment, which prompted me to explain. “I’m trying to quit plastic.”

Now, before you jump on me, I have done my homework. I do understand that both plastic and paper products have their ecological downsides. But, after much thought, I settled on the idea that paper is the lesser of two evils, since it’s much more likely to decompose, taking only two-to-six weeks in a landfill, while plastic bags need 10 to 20 years to degrade, and they release toxic chemicals in the process. When you consider that Americans alone go through hundreds of billions of them every year, you can see why I worry.

Without comment, the man switched the plastic mailing bag with one made of cardboard. I smiled and felt rather virtuous. Then, I paid and got my receipt. I stared at it for a moment and quickly realized that while plastic bags are free, paper mailers are extra. I stared at the row of numbers and noted the tacked-on cost of just under three bucks.

Doesn’t seem right, does it?

Now, I will admit that producing paper products is more costly than plastic. Still, when doing something for the greater good, should we not get a small nod of appreciation from the universe and not an extra fee?

That said, let’s face it. The choice between paper and plastic is fraught with all kinds of costs, both financial and environmental. The best answer, of course, is to carry only reusable bags, which I do at places like the grocery store. But that was not an option when I popped my book in the mail that day. (I will give the grocery stores credit, here, as you can recycle your plastic bags at many of them, but I sense few people take advantage of the offer. Perhaps, we can do better.)

I couldn’t help thinking about Wall-E, the sweet little robot trash collector who spent his days trying to clean up an abandoned Earth, the human inhabitants having fled the biological destruction they caused. Maybe, if we were all a little more like Wall-E, we could get the planet back in order. And perhaps somebody brilliant—I know you’re out there—can come up with a product that is sustainable and Earth friendly and…free.

The past and present collide when a tenacious reporter seeks information on an eleventh century magician…and uncovers more than she bargained for.

WOLF CATCHER

Anne Montgomery

Historical Fiction/Suspense

TouchPoint Press

February 2, 2022

In 1939, archeologists uncovered a tomb at the Northern Arizona site called Ridge Ruin. The man, bedecked in fine turquoise jewelry and intricate bead work, was surrounded by wooden swords with handles carved into animal hooves and human hands. The Hopi workers stepped back from the grave, knowing what the Moochiwimi sticks meant. This man, buried nine hundred years earlier, was a magician.

Former television journalist Kate Butler hangs on to her investigative reporting career by writing freelance magazine articles. Her research on The Magician shows he bore some European facial characteristics and physical qualities that made him different from the people who buried him. Her quest to discover The Magician’s origin carries her back to a time when the high desert world was shattered by the birth of a volcano and into the present-day dangers of archeological looting where black market sales of antiquities can lead to murder.

REVIEW COPIES OF WOLF CATCHER AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

Review/interview requests: media@touchpointpress.com

Get your copy where you buy books.