"Life is served raw in wild country." That's what botanist turned smoke jumper Jesse Turnbull has to say to her new friend Sara - or is she an enemy? - when a backcountry hike that begins innocently enough turns flaky. Along for the trek over Skyrocket Ridge are Sara Cafferty, who is fighting a big temper and her own resurgent love of stone; and her fiancé, Rob, a guy who knows how to keep his head down. They're looking for a wilderness experience, and they are going to have one. Bringing up the rear as the hike begins is Tom Sevlakovs, an enormously strong man whose pack contains God knows what and weighs nearly as much as Sara. She characterizes him as the "guard dog." She doesn't know how close to right she is. At the head of the line is Archer MacClehan, the "lead dog." He's unflappable - nearly. Archer has dreams, though; dreams that lead him into dangerous places. He doesn't much like having these dreams. And out in the brush, just out of sight - most of the time - is Number Seven, aka The Hungry Now. He's a bear, a grizzly bear, and if bears could remember things as two-leggers do, he would remember why the Smell-among-smells troubles him so. It might be best for everyone that he can't. Besides trying to fill his ever-empty stomach, The Hungry Now's job is to make other species pay attention. Everyone on this hike is going to know that The Hungry Now is very good at his job. This first Archer MacClehan adventure will soon be followed by the second, "Archer MacClehan and the Girl Who Wouldn't Stop Running," due out in March of 2014 from Blue Creek Press.
About the Author: Sandy Compton grew up in Western Montana, where he lives still. He is an avid backpacker, wilderness advocate and traveler, particularly in the American West. Sandy has been writing for publication for 30 years and has multiple novels, non-fiction works, and hundreds of essays and articles to his credit. As an addict in recovery, he writes unflinchingly about his own struggle and the nature of addiction in a memoir, "Side Trips From Cowboy: Addiction, Recovery and the Western American Myth." "Side Trips From Cowboy" was published in 2009, with a second edition released in May of 2013. His novels include "Jason's Passage" (1995), "Archer MacClehan & The Hungry Now," (2005) "The Friction of Desire" (2012), "Scars on Top of Scars" (2014)," and "Archer MacClehan & The Girl Who Wouldn't Stop Running," (2014). He has also recently released a children's Christmas book, "Caleb's Miracle," and "Camping In Wyoming," by his grandmother, Mariam Lawton Clayton. "Camping In Wyoming" was designed around Mariam's handwritten account and original "kodaks" of her honeymoon trip to Yellowstone National Park in 1910. With eight books to his credit and more on the way, he has become an important regional voice in the Northern Rockies. He has also helped other authors make their books reality through Blue Creek Press (www.bluecreekpress.com) In his "other" life, Compton is program coordinator for Friends of the Scotchman Peaks Wilderness (wwwscotchmanpeaks.org), advocating for wilderness designation for the 88,000-acre Scotchman Peaks on the border between Idaho and Montana near where he lives.