About this item
Anthropologist Sophia Shepard is researching the impact of tourism on cultural sites in a remote national monument on the Utah-Arizona border when she crosses paths with two small-time criminals. The Ashdown brothers were hired to steal maps from a "collector" of Native American artifacts, but their ineptitude has alerted the local sheriff to their presence. Their employer, a former lobbyist seeking lucrative monument land that may soon be open to energy exploration, sends a fixer to clean up their mess. Suddenly, Sophia must put her theories to the test in the real world, and the stakes are higher than she could have ever imagined. What begins as a madcap caper across the RV-strewn vacation lands of southern Utah becomes a meditation on mythology, authenticity, the ethics of preservation, and one nagging question: Who owns the past?.
About the Author
Todd Robert Petersen was born in the Palouse of Eastern Washington and grew up in Portland, Oregon. He was educated by Jesuits then studied Film at the University of Oregon. Petersen spent a number of years in the San Juan Islands working with kids in the outdoors.He left the Puget Sound to pursue a graduate degree in creative writing at Northern Arizona University and then moved on to Oklahoma State in the town of Stillwater to study with Brian Evenson. His PhD work was in creative writing and critical theory.His next book, IT NEEDS TO LOOK LIKE WE TRIED, will be released by Counterpoint Press in May 2018. Petersen currently resides in Cedar City, Utah with his wife and three children. He is a Professor of English and the Director of Project-Based Learning Southern Utah University.
