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What sets Arches Enemy apart from your previous National Park Mysteries?

 

Arches Enemy has been my most satisfying entry in the National Park Mystery series to date because its plotline concerns an issue near and dear to me—the ongoing attempts to eliminate national monuments in the West that preserve irreplaceable wilderness and sacred Native American lands. The book also provides background to readers about the late, great Edward Abbey, whose writings and environmental activism I greatly admire.

 

Tell us about your dream book launch party.

 

The launch party for Arches Enemy would be especially fun if Ed Abbey could come back from the grave to attend, along with his merry band of fictional characters, the Monkey Wrench Gang, from his novel of the same name. If those folks could attend, the party would most logically be held in some remote, spectacular corner of Utah’s redrock country, with plenty of beer, music, and dancing.

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“Utah’s canyon country has been

my favorite place on Earth

for as long as I can remember.”

 

Describe one of your favorite places. What makes this place special to you?

 

Utah’s canyon country has been my favorite place on Earth for as long as I can remember. I spent my childhood exploring Utah’s redrock landscape with my family, and my honeymoon backpacking Grand Gulch in the heart of canyon country with my wife. I’ve spent as much of my adulthood as possible hiking, backpacking, and rafting Utah’s canyonlands with my wife and sons. Southeast Utah is special to me for its incomparable high desert beauty, its remoteness, and its sacredness to modern Native Americans as the former homeland and final resting place of generation upon generation of Ancestral Puebloan peoples.

 

Why Torrey House?

 

I’m a firm believer in the mission of Torrey House Press to develop literary resources for the conservation movement in the West that educate and entertain readers, and inspire action. In particular, I am blown-away impressed by the key role Torrey House played in the 2016 creation of two-million-acre Bears Ears National Monument, which preserves lands in southeast Utah sacred to more than twenty modern Native American tribes, through the publication and dissemination to key stakeholders in Washington, DC, and at the White House of the chapbook.

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I’m deeply impressed with the overall quality of writing in THP’s books, and the sincerity and desire to preserve the West and make the world a better place that clearly lie at the heart of all Torrey House authors.

 

What are you most looking forward to in 2019?

 

The June launch of Arches Enemy!

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Help bring Arches Enemy by Scott Graham to the page.

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Scott Graham is the author of the acclaimed National Park Mystery series, featuring archaeologist Chuck Bender and Chuck’s spouse Janelle Ortega. In addition to the National Park Mystery series, Scott is the author of five nonfiction books, including Extreme Kids, winner of the National Outdoor Book Award. Scott is an avid outdoorsman who enjoys backpacking, river rafting, skiing, and mountaineering. He has made a living as a newspaper reporter, magazine editor, radio disk jockey, and coal-shoveling fireman on the steam-powered Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. He lives with his spouse, who is an emergency physician, in Durango, Colorado. Graham’s fifth National Park Mystery, Arches Enemy, is forthcoming June 2019 from Torrey House Press.