Even though there's a pandemic happening, life must go on—and that includes publishing books. After being delayed from a June publication, a new novel from a Wyoming author has just been published.
The novel is based on a real-life, mysterious assassination attempt on Teddy Roosevelt.
When author and Jackson local James Ross found out that before Teddy Roosevelt was president, somebody pulled a knife on Roosevelt while he was on a cross-Atlantic ship, it got Ross thinking.
"Why go after him?" Ross said. "Who would do it? It's not in any of the history books, as much as I searched it wasn't in any of the American newspapers. Just this little blurb in the Naples newspaper."
So Ross decided to make up the answers to those questions. In his new novel Hunting Teddy Roosevelt, the titular protagonist spends a year on an enormous safari across central and eastern Africa. And meanwhile, Roosevelt's being hunted.
The setting is based on the author's experiences living in the Congo for the Peace Corps.
Ross said it's tough publishing during a pandemic. "Yeah, there can't be a worse time to launch a book than the first time bookstores have been closed since Gutenberg invented the moveable type, so it's been a challenge," Ross said.
But bookstores are beginning to reopen, albeit without the crowds. So Ross is going to bookstores and talking to buyers there, hoping they'll pick up his novel. And in the meantime, you can find Hunting Teddy Roosevelt online wherever books are sold.
Have a question about this story? Contact the reporter, Erin Jones, at ejones29@uwyo.edu.