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  Richard S. Wheeler

A prolific writer of westerns, Richard S. Wheeler has been a journalist and editor throughout his professional career. Wheeler, who once worked as a ranch hand, has been writing novels fulltime since 1987. The author of more than fifty western novels, he is the recipient of four Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, as well as an Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement in western literature. Often eschewing the tropes and formulas of western writing, Wheeler instead seeks to write a more original story with higher literary goals. "I haven't really varied much from my original wish to write a richer, more literate western story," Wheeler is quoted as saying in Twentieth-Century Western Writers.

Wheeler is often praised for his accurate details and use of historical settings. Susan Gene Clifford, in a Library Journal review of Sierra, called Wheeler "a real master at capturing the history, atmosphere, and romance of 1850s California." A reviewer in Roundup, commenting on Sun Mountain, wrote, "No one can evoke the feel of grit from dirty streets on one's face and clothes, and the sounds of loud revelry of drunken miners loose on the town with bags of gold dust clutched in their hands as well as Dick Wheeler."

Among Wheeler's more popular books are those from his "Skye's West" series featuring Barnaby Skye. "The Skye novels are Wheeler's best pure storytelling," Walker, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly commented, "with all the qualities he admires in reading the works of other writers: rich characterization, well-drawn female characters, unexpected elements, eccentricities, lore, and history that never slow the pace of the story."

Wheeler's "Flint" series: Flint's Gift, Flint's Honor, and Flint's Truth --also shows him to be "a master of frontier detail and the fine points of newspapering," wrote a critic in Kirkus Reviews. Sam Flint is a crusading frontier journalist, determined to report the truth and unafraid of rival newspapermen or infuriated targets of his reporting. "The Flint series will be a welcome addition to the reading lists of younger western fans," remarked a Kirkus Reviews critic, "and a happy find for all those who prefer more traditional forms of the genre."

Richard Shaw Wheeler was born March 12, 1935 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Today he and his wife, Sue Hart, live in Livingston, Montana. Mr. Wheeler is a member of the Western Writers of America.

From: Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2006. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2006. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC

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