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BIOGRAPHY
of JOHN NEWMAN
Author of PEYOTE MOON
An Eco-ethnic Thriller

John Sutthoff Newman was raised in rural northern California, where he became an experienced outdoorsman, and later worked as a river guide throughout the West. After working for the Sierra Club in Washington DC, he completed his undergraduate studies at Stanford University, majoring in Human Biology. He also studied fiction with Al Young and Scott Turow. While at Stanford, he completed a study of the struggles of the Round Valley Indian Tribe to prevent inundation of their ancestral tribal lands by a proposed reservoir on the Eel River. That lead to graduate school in Ecology at the University of California, Davis, and a subsequent National Science Foundation grant. He later wrote for a northern California environmental newspaper, and taught at a college in Oslo, Norway, before embarking on a career in public affairs in San Francisco.

Rafting the Tuolumne

“I learned early-on the critical importance of water, not just as a commodity, but as a sustaining element to all life. And from my contacts with Native Americans, I came to appreciate the spiritual and deeply sacred qualities associated with water. I am fascinated by the shifting boundaries between what we know as facts, and what we believe to be true, which are not always one and the same.”

Rafting the Klamath River

In addition to Peyote Moon , he has written several screenplays, a stage play, and a collection of short stories, and was a recipient of a juried Marin Arts Council writer’s grant. All of his works derive from personal experience combined with extensive research. For this novel, he spent many years at Tahoe and with the types of characters – wildlife management professionals, Native Americans, and water experts – who are developed in the story. As part of his research, he studied the Washo language with elders at the tribal rancheria in Nevada, who affectionately bestowed upon him the name “gewe’ tashowe” (laughing coyote).

Trans-Sierra Ski Tour

“The kind of stories I like to read and write tend to deal with contemporary western themes and characters, strong story lines, high stakes, wide open spaces, a laconic sense of humor, and a credible spark of magic realism capable of transforming the ordinary world we live in, to something filled with new possibilities. The personal challenges faced by my characters, and the transformations that result, are the driving force in all my writing, even as they grapple with extraordinary dangers and epic conflicts.”

Important creative influences include the outdoor writing and paintings of Russell Chatham; novels and stories by Tony Hillerman, Annie Proulx, David Guterson, Wallace Stegner, and Mark Twain; poetry by Gary Snyder and Robinson Jeffers; and stage plays by Sam Shepard.

“Peyote Moon comes right out of my experience, especially the character of the protagonist, Sam Comstock. He’s a game warden, which is what I always wanted to become, but like most good intentions, a variety of life circumstances got in the way. The father of one of my best friends in high school was a game warden, and I came to believe that was the greatest of all jobs, protecting wildlife, spending your days outdoors.”

Spring Creek Fishing

“Hunting and fishing figures prominently in many of my stories, and as a boy growing up in the northern valley, we fished for salmon and shad in the Sacramento River, and worked the trout streams flowing down from Mt. Lassen and the Sierras. I also love to track and observe animals in the wild, but I have to admit that the only real hunting I ever did was for rats at the local dump. My buddies and I would go out on a Friday night with an arsenal of weaponry more suited for a peasant uprising than a sporting event; shotguns, deer rifles, a variety of hand guns. It was an apocalyptic experience, the only light from the glow of the burning trash, thousands upon thousands of rats swarming around our feet, all of us drinking and laughing, blasting away. In retrospect, it was amazing that no one shot their foot or head off in the commotion. None of that is directly in the novel, but it certainly refined my sensibilities.”