Saturday, July 19, 2014

KATIE LEE

I attended a book signing at Peregrine Books in Prescott Saturday afternoon for an Arizona legend. Katie Lee of Jerome, Arizona, has been a singer, a recording artist, an actress, an author and, most important to her, an environmental activist opposed to the Glen Canyon Dam.



Today she read from her latest book "The Ghosts of Dandy Crossing."



It is a slightly fictionalized tale of herself and her "Buck".  The two of them posed for her camera (with a timer) many years ago.  She said she posed the picture for a previous book "Ten Thousand Goddam Cattle, A History of the American Cowboy in Song, Story and Verse." She said it was meant to convey the myth that the only way to get a cowboy to take a bath was to hold a gun on him.


For one reason or another the picture wasn't used for the earlier book but it lives on as the cover of the current one.

Katie read several excerpts from her book, one of which was loaded with "salty" language, which filled the bookstore via the sound system.

Afterward I talked with the store's general manager, Tom Broderson, an old friend from my bookselling days.  He joked that he relaxed the store's PG-13 rating for any author over 90.

Katie Lee turns 95 in October.

6 comments:

  1. Bless her heart, what a fine person, and the experiences she must have had.
    I'm going to add the book to my list at the local bookstore, I'll have it for Autumn or early Winter reading.

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  2. That is a reasonable policy.

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  3. She has one cowboy song about the Verde Valley that I have never been able to find. Considering she has been praised in the past by Utah Phillips, Edward Abbey, and David Foreman, she must be a rascal. She was right to take a stand against Glenn Canyon Dam and the creation of Lake Foul (Powell).

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  4. I'm not aware of Katie Lee, but I'm off to Google her.

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  5. Was not aware of her. Sounds like another southwest original.

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  6. I love the manager's policy :)

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