Here's a sampling of High Plains titles on Wyoming and the West: history, outlaws and lawmen, women, poetry, memoirs, and other perspectives of the West. For more information click on the image of the book.
Follow the Boys of Company K to Wyoming during the Civil War.
The inside story of the life of Butch Cassidy.
Poems that will change the way the world looks at women in ranching.
A side of the military you never read about the official U.S. Army Laundresses.
Did Tom Horn commit the murder of 14-year-old Willie Nickell for which he was hanged?
The story of the horse that became the symbol of Wyoming
Frontiersman Biography
A road trip for a cause...on a donkey.
Early Cheyenne, Wyoming, was jam-packed with fascinating people, both famous and infamous. Lori Van Pelt has written 24 biographies ranging from water law pioneer Elwood Mead, whose name graces one of the nation’s most spectacular reservoirs, to champion rodeo cowgirl Prairie Rose Henderson, who died alone on her namesake prairie.
Barney Ford, the son of a slave, owned the city’s finest hotel. Persimmon Bill was a quick-change artist, a master of escape, and a murderer. Asa Mercer wrote the most controversial book in Wyoming history, Banditti of the Plains. During Dazee Bristol’s 105 years she bubbled with vitality—when she didn’t have a buggy, she rented a bike to ride to a ranch to meet President Teddy Roosevelt; she played the honkytonk organ on Frontier Days parade floats for 41 years; she wrote a newspaper column which ran more years than any other in the nation.
This book is a must for anyone interested in Cheyenne or Wyoming history. It will provide excellent source material for many years to come.
Lori Van Pelt is quickly becoming one of the most respected writers in Wyoming with both a book of short stories from the University of New Mexico Press and a biography of Amelia Earhart in Forge’s American Heroes series.
“Wow! What a book! In this fascinating volume, Wyoming author Lori Van Pelt has breathed life into two dozen Cheyenne residents, some famous and others not so well known. The result of meticulous research combined with an engaging writing style, Van Pelt’s mini-biographies will stand the test of time to take their permanent places in Wyoming literature and history.” •• James A. Crutchfield. Western Writers of America Spur Award Recipient
Lori Van Pelt is the unusual writer who has found success in writing poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, all three.
She is the author of Amelia Earhart: The Sky’s No Limit (Forge, American Heroes series, 2005), named to the New York Public Library’s “Best Books for the Teen Age 2006” list. She is also the author of the Wyoming-based Dreamers and Schemers historical nonfiction series, including Dreamers and Schemers: Profiles from Carbon County Wyoming’s Past and Capital Characters of Old Cheyenne: Dreamers and Schemers. Her award-winning nonfiction articles have appeared in a variety of national and regional publications, including the WREN (Wyoming Rural Electric News), WWA’s Roundup, True West, and Aviation History.
Her short fiction has been published in a number of national anthologies, and the lead story in her own collection, Pecker’s Revenge and Other Stories from the Frontier’s Edge (University of New Mexico Press, 2005), won the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Short Fiction in 2006. Her short story “The Wild-Eyed Witness” earned recognition as a Spur Finalist for Best Short Fiction in 2008.
Both Lori and her husband, Eugene, were featured in the television documentary series Cowboys and Outlaws airing on The History Channel. Filming for this episode took place on the Walck Ranch, their cattle ranch near Saratoga, Wyoming.
In addition, Lori is a recipient of a 2010 Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry from the Wyoming Arts Council. She is an active member of Western Writers of America.