Return to Phantom Creek is a novel set in the mountains of present day Idaho. Three pals - Casey, Link, and Jammer - begin their early years together in the summers as smokejumpers. Later, Casey and Link join the Special Forces, and Jammer becomes the firefighting unit manager. After fifteen years, now working in the civilian world, the friends meet each fall in the roadless backcountry for their annual archery elk hunt. This season will be different. A band of terrorists, pushed from their urban hideaways, are storing explosives in an abandoned mine. After being discovered the hostiles attempt to eliminate the three friends. Gunfire rattles across the ridges. The FBI and sheriff deputies arrive by helicopters. A female firefighter is taken hostage. The chase moves from the mountains to the river canyons and into the southern desert. The three friends bypass government authorities and take matters into their own hands to rescue the hostage. In the action romance flourishes, from an unexpected direction. ### The author was a member of the elite cadre of adventure seeking men and a few women, smokejumpers, who parachute into the backcountry to suppress forest fires. This is a story of encountering a group of terrorists who are out to create mayhem, some of which is to start fires in the backcountry using aerial arson techniques. I like the book and you will too. -Earl Dodds, USFS (Ret) Smokejumper and Backcountry Ranger. Entertaining, a fun read and fast paced. A great adventure story set in the mountains of Idaho where the author pulls you into the action from the very beginning. -Suzanne Rainville, USFS (Ret) Payette Forest Supervisor. Return to Phantom Creek is a plot with real-life experiences developed into an exciting and overpowering scenario with the reader questioning whether it is fact or fiction. -Lt. Colonel Loree Nugent USAF (Ret)
About the Author: Bud Filler is the author of Two-Man Stick, A Memoir of the Smokejumpers. He has worked as a smokejumper, forester, logger, log driver on the Clearwater River, and corporate manager in the forest products industry. As an entrepreneur, he was co-owner for twenty-three years of the Filler King Company, a timber products operation, and after selling the company, returned to writing, skiing, and traveling the backcountry. The author holds bachelor's and master's degrees in forestry and wood science from Pennsylvania State and the University of British Columbia. In college he was forestry class president and distinguished military graduate. On active duty, he was an artillery and infantry line officer in the Army's 9th Infantry Division. Bud is married to the lovely Ellie Claire from Philadelphia, and they live in Idaho.