Gordy Sauer is a native Texan and transplant Missourian. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and an MA from Clemson University. His writing has appeared in Narrative Magazine and Boulevard, among other places, and he received a 2013 artist's grant for residency at the Vermont Studio Center. A lifelong educator, he has taught snowboarding, fly fishing, middle school math and science, and now works as a speechwriter at Mizzou. Child in the Valley is his first novel.
To write about the Old West without incorporating violence is to do a grave injustice to the historical victims of colonialism, genocide, sexual violence, and cultural erasure.