Our National Parks at Risk

Guest Post: Scott Graham

I met Scott earlier this year at Left Coast Crime, my favorite of the crime writing conferences and invited him here for a guest b log.  This post today was scheduled to go up this week.  By chance, I woke up this morning to a national news report on how the current USA powers that be are putting our precious treasures, our splendid National Parks, at risk.  I wish Scott's request, articulated below, were not so urgent.  Alas, as the high season for those splendid places is just beginning, they are highly at risk.  I urge you to join me in taking action to defend them before it's too late. 

Greetings, Murder Is Everywhere aficionados!

I had the good fortune of meeting contributor Annamaria Alfieri last month at the Left Coast Crime annual conference in Denver, Colorado. She invited me to contribute a post to Murder Is Everywhere.

I am the author of the nine-books-and-counting National Park Mystery Series, published by Torrey House Press (torreyhouse.org), the fast-growing nonprofit publisher of environmental and social justice fiction and nonfiction based in Salt Lake City, Utah. My latest mystery in the series, 2024’s Death Valley Duel, is a current finalist for the 2025 Colorado Book Award (scottfranklingraham.com).

I’d like to use Annamaria’s offer to report in to you from what I feel are the writing and intellectual trenches here in America right now.

Specifically, I want you to know that my American writing compadres and I are fighting with every tool at our disposal to maintain all that we are threatened with losing here in our country over the next four years.

I have founded a substack called Authors for Public Lands (https://authorssupportingtheparks.substack.com/) with two fellow authors whose mystery/thrillers are, like mine, set in America’s iconic national parks. Four additional authors whose books are set on America’s publicly owned federal lands have joined us. Each week, we are posting actions citizens can take to protect America’s priceless public lands from the threat of being sold off or destroyed by the Trump administration.

Likewise, many other American author friends of mine are banding together to fight the severe science, health, and education cutbacks by the current administration.

Though intellectual freedom and curiosity lost out in the last American election, I believe support for education and scholarship will return to the majority in the US in the years ahead.

My request to you in the meantime: Please don’t give up on the American project just yet. This is a dark time for intellect in America, but I am hopeful it is the darkness before the return of the light in the many intellectual fields in which the US has traditionally played an active and key role.

Thank you,

Scott Graham