Mariano’s Woman selected as finalist by Colorado Author’s League Book Award
One of three finalists for the 2020 award for historical fiction.
Entries by David Jessup
Snow Storm Prep for Ranchers
Snow is piling up today in Northern Colorado. Channel 9 in Denver did a nice piece on how cattle ranchers prepare, featuring our own Sylvan Dale Ranch. The two cowboys in the video are Josh Ciardullo – cattle rancher now leasing grazing at the Ranch, and Dustin Call our Horse Operation Forman. Two great guys. […]
My interview on Cowboy Up Podcast
The owner of the White Stallion Ranch in Tucson, Arizona, Russell True, interviewed me on his “Cowboy Up” podcast on February 19, 2021. We talked about the historic characters in my novels, our family’s Sylvan Dale Guest Ranch where I grew up, using grass-fed cattle to improve the landscape, the Big Thompson River floods, and […]
Review of Breaking Clean by Judy Blunt
The compelling prose in this memoir about growing up on a northern Montana ranch makes you catch your breath in wonder. In Judy Blunt‘s telling, the landscape and its climate become a living breathing thing, dishing out both beauty and horror in Jekyll-Hyde extremes. Frozen cattle, rescued from the harrowing blizzard of 1964 while barely […]
Review of The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride
I love writing historical fiction. Digging up dry bare bones of long-dead people and reassembling them with imagined personalities, motives and quirky character traits. In both the writing and the reading, one can break the chains of current reality and escape, Houdini-like, into an imagined fantasy world. At the end, most authors bring you back […]
Mother Missing from Beautiful Statue of Mariano Medina and Daughter
This beautiful statue of Mariano Medina and his daughter Lena, created by gifted sculptor Jane Dedecker, was installed at the new Larimer County building in Loveland, Colorado, in May 2018. As much as I love the piece, I wish Lena’s mother, Takansy, were also present. She is the main character in my latest historical novel, […]
Envisioning the Future of the Big Thompson River
If you live in Northern Colorado, you no doubt appreciate the beauty, the utility, and occasional destructiveness of the Big Thompson River. You now have an opportunity to help determine the River’s future. The Big Thompson Watershed Coalition, which I chaired for two years, is seeking your opinion about possible projects to improve river health. […]
Killings of Osage Indians for Oil
Killers of the Flower Moon The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann This book is a history that reads like a whodunnit. A page-turner that bring to life one of the most shocking atrocities in Oklahoma history: the murder of Osage Indians by upstanding white citizens to acquire oil rights […]
Mariano’s Woman Article
Nice Article about my new book, Mariano’s Woman, in today’s newspaper.
The Color of Lightning by Paulette Jiles
As a writer who has worked to give voice to an Indian woman growing up in 1840s Montana (Mariano’s Woman), I am awestruck by a book I just read entitled The Color of Lightning, by Paulette Jiles. It tells the story of a freed slave named Britt Johnson who hauls his family to Texas after […]