Local author Gerald Elias will read from his new book Roundtree Days followed by a book signing on Tuesday November 8th at 6:30. Follow the link to find out more about Roundtree Days and check out the synopsis below:
ABOUT THE BOOK:
The essentials of the story are simple. Roundtree is a wildly popular cable television Western series, a la Netflix’s Longmire. Every year there is a weekend-long Roundtree Days Festival in Loomis City, Utah, where the series is filmed. (My story, in fact, was inspired by my own visit to Longmire Days in Buffalo, Wyoming.) Not everyone in Loomis City, however, is pleased with the intrusion, even though the show has brought economic prosperity to the town that had been on the verge of disappearing into the Utah desert. Some would prefer the “good old days” at any cost.
In the course of a single day, the festival atmosphere is marred by three seemingly unrelated events. First, the sheriff’s barn is burned to the ground. Then an elderly Roundtree tourist goes missing. Then one of the stars of the show is found brutally murdered in her hotel room.
The hero of our story, Jefferson Dance, a former Western lawman who is in town simply to join his friend, Poot Ahern, to embark upon a hunting trip upon the conclusion of the festival. Dance had been deputized for the weekend to manage traffic and crowds, but upon the sudden turn of events was made acting sheriff, putting their vacation plans on hold. Dance, with the assistance of Poot and Linda Benallie, editor of the local newspaper, the Public Pinyon, is ultimately able to tie all three crimes together and apprehend the guilty party.
Central to the story is the blurred line between the reality of Loomis City and the fiction of the TV show. The popularity of the show is such that the thousands of Roundtree’s fanatic fan base who cram Loomis City for the festival are more apt to obey the wishes and commands of Connor Michener, the actor who portrays Sheriff Vernon Roundtree, than Jefferson Dance. That line is even further blurred because the plot lines of the series mirror the issues of significance to the town; for example, traditional family values versus a more open society, the conflict between old and new economies, whether to promote tourism or exploit mineral wealth in culturally sensitive areas, and how to grow a town when the availability of the most important resource—water—is at a premium. These issues become integral in the understanding of the story’s crimes and in the ability of our hero to solve them.