I am a native Utahn, a child of the Great Depression who started school during WWII. The fifth of six children, I grew up on a family farm a few miles south of Salt Lake City. I was educated at Brigham Young University (BS, 1962) and the Univerity of Idaho (JD, 1974).
I love the Old Testament and, having read it many times, I felt driven (compelled?) to retell its wonderful stories in modern English. It was a great adventure and the finished product is more than I ever hoped for. With the inclusion of information from other sources, including the works of Josephus, many things just almost fell into place for the project. When I began, I thought there might be 50 or 60 great stories to tell, but the project actually produced two books. The first, published in early 2007, I entitled How Often Would I Have Gathered You. The second, published in March 2009, is called I Will Make of Thee a Great Nation. Both books have won awards.
The first was written for Latter-day Saint adults and young adults; it has 229 stories. The second is a collection of 219 stories for a general Christian adult audience. The books are very much alike. They tell the same marvelous stories--the second just has fewer stories because some of the stories in HOWIHGY are from the LDS Pearl of Great Price (the books of Moses and Abraham) and are not from the OT at all. Because non-LDS Christians as not familiar with the Pearl of Great Price, I omitted those stories and parts of other stories from IWMOTAGN. (Some stories were omitted completely and parts of other stories had to be combined because there was so little left once I omitted the wonderful P of GP material.)
You can read some sample stories on my web sites at oldtestamentor dot com (for I Will Make of Thee a Great Nation) or at newviewoldtestament dot com (for How Often Would I Have Gathered You).
I also wrote another book many years ago when I was teaching genealogical research at Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho. At that time, there was no good text on American genealogical research, so I wrote one. The book, The Researcher's Guide to American Genealogy, was published in 1973 by Genealogical Publishing Co. Since that time there have been two more editions, the third edition being published in 2000. It is still the most widely used textbook on American genealogical research and is considered by many to be a classic. It has sold more than 100,000 copies through the three editions. (Can you imagine how much space 100,000 books would take up if you stacked them all in one place? Neither can I.)
I enjoy life, and my wife says I'm a "barrell of fun."
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