Enjoy the slideshow of places that I visited while writing the novel. See more information about the book below!
Welcome to Pindall, Wyoming, population 658,where winters are long, Main Street is short, and everything is about to change.
For Shari Brock, who loses her on-again-off-again husband in a tragic accident, change arrives with his illegitimate daughter, Erica. Meanwhile, Shari’s son, Jason, embarks on a cockeyed crime spree that makes him the laughingstock of the town. But that isn’t all: the local sawmill has been taken over by a multinational corporation, a wolf appears out of nowhere, and the yearly town celebration becomes a battlefield. Vivid characters lend both grace and humor to this romance of the western heart: Ronald Dailey, a sawmill manager who falls in love at first sight with a mysterious environmentalist; Marguerite Brock, Shari’s mother-in-law, who accepts the lonely choices that have made her the richest woman in town until an old love reawakens her; Dave Phillips, a cowboy whose horse has tragically betrayed him, and others–all surrounded by the stunning beauty of Yellowstone National Park.
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From the Author:
Clean Cut has been a joy to write. It started as a spoof on life in a small town, but the more I wrote, the more attached I became to the characters. There are more than 100 named characters in this book, some of whom appear only once. But everybody knows everyone else’s business–isn’t that typical of small town life?
The outdoor stage in Moose Pass, Alaska became the model for the stage in Asa Pindall Park in Pindall. This is the stage that I imagine Shari singing on at the end of the novel.
Pindall is an entirely fictional place. The astute reader will realize that the distances between Pindall and the rest of the world just don’t add up: It is 64 miles from Yellowstone and 70 miles from Riverton, yet it is also 50 miles from Jackson and “a couple of hours” from Bozeman, Montana. This allowed me to incorporate a number of characteristics of small towns from all over the West into my portrait. I have to give credit to the following: Moose Pass, Alaska; Palmer, Alaska; Sitka, Alaska; Calhan, Colorado; Castle Rock, Colorado; Elbert, Colorado; Elizabeth, Colorado; Franktown, Colorado; Grand Lake, Colorado; Kersey, Colorado; Kiowa, Colorado; Larkspur, Colorado; Sedalia, Colorado; Trinidad, Colorado; American Falls, Idaho; Kimberly, Idaho; Flathead, Montana; Astoria, Oregon; Custer, South Dakota; Hill City, South Dakota; Wall, South Dakota; Buffalo, Wyoming; Dubois, Wyoming; Guernsey, Wyoming; Hulett, Wyoming; Kemmerer, Wyoming; Laramie, Wyoming; Lusk, Wyoming, Yosemite National Park, and, of course, Yellowstone National Park.
I hope you enjoy reading Clean Cut as much as I enjoyed writing it!
Laurie Marr Wasmund
Lost Ranch Books 