Author Lou Dean of Dinosaur, Colorado, has released her eighth book, titled “Autumn of the Big Snow.”
Dean is an award-winning writer of five memoirs, two young adult fiction novels, and countless magazine articles. “Autumn of the Big Snow” is Dean’s first foray into adult fiction. In the story, heavy equipment operator August Atkins befriends coworker Katie, who refuses to talk about her past and is suddenly unable to write music anymore.
This summer, Dean published a personal and powerful story in Guideposts magazine about what she experienced after a violent crime in 2015 on Blue Mountain. Two criminals in a stolen car that had broken down off Hwy. 40 were approached by a deputy sheriff and a Colorado Parks and Wildlife officer. During the interaction, one of the criminals drew a gun and disarmed the officers, who fought back and shot the attacker during the struggle. “That’s when I arrived,” Dean writes. But that wasn’t the end of the story for Dean.
For the next few years Dean suffered nightmares, anxiety, exhaustion, and other signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). At a book signing, a stranger noticed Dean’s distress and handed her a phone number for a therapist who practices eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) treatment.
Although she’d always considered therapy “nonsense,” she couldn’t deny what she was experiencing and she made an appointment. To her surprise, the shooting wasn’t the only trauma she needed to process, she was carrying trauma from her childhood as well, and the shooting had brought it all to the surface. After “many visits” the nightmares disappeared, sleep returned, and she was able to return to writing and hiking with her dogs.
“With God’s help, I recovered from trauma in the present by reckoning honestly with the traumas of my past,” Dean writes. “Sometimes the answer to prayer is ‘get help.’ That’s what those kind ladies told me at the rodeo. I’m so glad I listened.”
Dean is excited about the release of her latest creation. The book is available on Amazon. She will have a book signing in Rangely at Sweetbriar from 10 a.m.-12 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 11 and will be speaking and signing books at the Meeker Public Library from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 18.
For more information about Dean and her other books, visit loudean.com.
BOOK SIGNING
Sweetbriar in Rangely
Saturday, Nov. 11
10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Meeker Public Library
Saturday, Nov. 18
10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
