The Stayton Public Library is excited
to announce an author visit with Oregon author R. Gregory Nokes on Thursday,
January 31, 2019 at 7:00 pm in the E. G. Siegmund Meeting Room. There will be a
reception accompanying the event.
R. Gregory Nokes has traveled the
world as a reporter and editor. He is author of three non-fiction Western
histories. His latest book is The Troubled Life of Peter Burnett: Oregon
Pioneer and First Governor of California, published last year (2018) by
Oregon State University Press.
Troubled Life traces Burnett’s life from his birth
in Tennessee, to Missouri where he was a defense attorney for Mormon leader
Joseph Smith following the 1838 Mormon War, to his leadership of the first
major wagon train to Oregon in 1843. Five years later, in 1848, he followed the
gold rush to California, where he helped establish the city of Sacramento and
got himself elected California’s first governor. Burnett was known for his
advocacy of strict racial laws to ban African Americans from the West Coast.
Greg’s book is the first biography written about this talented, but deeply
flawed leader in the early American West.
Greg’s earlier books are Massacred
for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon and Breaking Chains: Slavery on
Trial in the Oregon Territory also published by Oregon State Press. Breaking
Chains was a finalist for the 2014 Oregon Book Award for non-fiction.
Greg spent more than forty years in
journalism. As a reporter in Washington, D.C. for The Associated Press, he
covered the State Department and traveled with several presidents and
secretaries of state. He retired to embark on a second career as an author and
lecturer on Western history.
A native of Oregon, Greg did his
undergraduate work at Willamette University and attended Harvard University as
a Nieman Fellow.
The Stayton Public Library’s speaking
events for 2019 are sponsored in part by the Stayton Friends of the Library and
the Marion County Cultural Corporation.