The Salmon River country of Idaho             

 (photo by Deb Carstensen)

Roger Howell was one of half a dozen kids raised in a somewhat migratory family, by a mostly single mom, and mostly in a dozen different houses in Boise. They lived in houses in Idaho Falls, Aberdeen, Cobalt, Butte, La Push, and Baker, too. They lived in wall tents in Idaho City and Frenchtown, and in a Studebaker on the south bank of the Boise, in the willows below Barber Dam. And what lessons for a writing career might there be in such commotion? Well first, if you’re in arrears with the rent, it’s best to blow town at 3:00 AM. But perhaps the better moral: If you're the new kid starting partway through the term, it’s good to say little and watch and listen a lot.

Things settled down by high school (just two houses in three years), and Roger subsequently attended Boise State University, U.C. Santa Barbara, Gonzaga University, and Clemson University, receiving degrees from three of the four. Most of his scribbling has been in the form of technical memoranda, reports, and journal articles during an international career as a geologist and environmental engineer—atypical preparation for a novelist, to be sure, but he’s also lived and worked in every small town in the west. Perhaps not every town, but he’s walked a lot of two-tracks and crossed a lot of creeks and fences. He has danced and drank and fished the length of the Rockies, and along the way has learned a little about the people of the west—and the spaces between them.