The Law of the Paiute and Other Stories

About the Book

The Law of the Paiute and Other Stories is about interesting people and events which are exciting, adventurous, real, life-changing, and original. It was written by an author who had lived much of what he wrote about during his 97 years.

About the Author

Bill Parks was born on October 14, 1897, on a farm in Iuka, Kansas. After working on farms and ranches over the West as a young man, Bill enlisted in the US Army during World War I, serving in France for a year. After returning home, he worked as a farm and ranch had and later on other jobs such as lumber mill hand, cotton picker, street car motorman, crane operator at Boulder Dam (now Hoover Dam), as a motion picture extra, and on his own as a prospector for gold and silver.

Bill first came to Arizona in 1924. While working in the winter of 1940/41 as a horse wrangler at Red Star Stable at Phoenix, he met and married Clara Lukens on April 12, 1941. Together they worked on farms and ranches until moving to Grand Canyon where Bill was a guide on the South Rom and out to the indian country, 1946 to 1962. They had two sons born at Grand Canyon in 1947 and 1949. The family moved to Prescott, arizona, in December, 1961, and Bill continued to return to the Canyon to work on weekends.

Although Bill hadn't gone beyond eight grade in school, he was self-taught in many things including geology and the proper use of the English language which served him well when he began to write short stories and later two novels which he had published; THE MESTIZO, a story of Old Arizona, published by Macmillan in 1955 and in England by Macdonald in 1956 and Foursquare Paperbacks in 1959, and recently republished by his wife Clara through Trafford Publishing. And his novel about the Navajo People in 1955, which was published by Clara through 1st Books in 2002, called THE SEVENTH HORIZON. This work was done posthumously for Bill, as he died at the age of 97 in June, 1995, at the Prescott V.A.M.C. Nursing Home. In addition to this other writing, Bill wrote a column for the Prescott Courier called UNDER THE SOUTHWEST SUN for 28 years. Much of Bill's life and adventures are told about in the memoir HORIZON HUNTERS by Clara Lukens Parks, published in 1999 by Wings of Atlanta Georgia. His book of short stories THE LAW OF THE PAIUTE AND OTHER STORIES is published posthumously through Trafford Publishing in Canada.

During his earlier career years of writing, Bill's friend and mentor, renowned author Rupert Hughes, told him that some day Bill Parks would have a name in American letters. It didn't happen that way, as life had a different but good plan for him, a wife who loved and encouraged him, two sons to love and to whom to introduce all the wonders of Nature. Thus, Bill had little time to promote his writing. He dedicated his first novel THE MESTIZO to "my friend Rupert Hughes" who had lived long enough to enjoy that distinction.