Yellowstone Reader
The National Park in Folklore, Popular Fiction, and Verse

Edited by Richard L. Saunders

336 PP., 6 x 9
Paper $17.95
ISBN 978-0-87480-756-1
Nature/Literature

In search of Old Faithful

For those of us fortunate enough to have visited Yellowstone on childhood camping trips, it is a place strange and mysterious that lingers and tantalizes with memories of Old Faithful and bubbling mud pots, roaring waterfalls and secret hopes of spying a black bear or a bison; a real place that seems as though it could have been created in our dreams. A Yellowstone Reader collects an evocative sample of fictional literature about Yellowstone--the best or most notable expressions of the niche Yellowstone Park occupies in the human imagination. Selections span the late nineteenth century through the 1980s and include fur trapper tales, short stories and serializations, a Victorian dime novel, young adult fiction, and a novelette published specifically for Yellowstone's tourist market. Each selection is accompanied by an editorial introduction providing useful historical and biographical information.

If you are among the more than one hundred million people who have visited the Park, these stories will reveal a place both familiar and unfamiliar, presenting its geysers, mountains, and rivers from the perspectives of the past. And if you've never walked Yellowstone's boardwalks or witnessed its hot springs, these stories will introduce, divert, and entertain as they enliven America's oldest and largest national park.

"More than a fascinating and entertaining core sample of historical literature,A Yellowstone Reader offers us a deepened appreciation of the many ways that the extraordinary features and landscape of Yellowstone National Park pique and inspire human imagination.
--Lee Whittlesey, Archivist, National Park Service

"There is no doubt in my mind that this volume will make a unique and necessary contribution to the literature and scholarship of Yellowstone National Park. For lovers of Yellowston...this book will be wonderful good-time reading."
--William Slaughter, editor of Camping Out in the Yellowstone,1882

Richard L. Saunders is the author of Printing in Deseret: Mormons, Economy, Politics, and Utah's Incunabula, 1849-1851(U. of Utah Press, 2000). He is curator of Special Collections and Archives at the Paul Meek Library, University of Tennessee at Martin.