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Local Senior Publishes

first book
January 28, 2006
By J France
Fernley resident Darrel Wright published his first novel last year at the tender age of 82 years young.

"It was originally intended to be a short story", said Wright. But his concept of a short story grew to 587 pages. The story entitled Jed's Place is 'a cowboys tale' written to reflect the true spirit of the old west.

Darrel Wright was born in 1922 in Oklahoma and was raised in Colorado. "My father had a flair for telling wild tales." Wright said, "This was a cheap form of entertainment when I was a kid. With no TV and no radio, we relied on him to keep us entertained at night. He had a knack for storytelling and making the stories flow and perhaps I inherited it."

Remembering years past, he talked about his friends slowly disappearing from the old haunt during WW2 and not wanting to be left behind he too joined the service.

After his tour he went back to school. After he graduated he went into troop carrier work on C-47 type aircraft carrying para troupers. Wright said, "In 1948 my job called for a little bit of writing. I wrote better than I talked, and people noticed it."

When asked about when he started formulating his book he replied that he was still a "very young man". Wright said, "It was about 1957 and we were in England or Germany and somehow when you meet a lot of those people they want to know about your background. Well, we were from Colorado, cowboy country, and we just got in the habit of responding with cowboy stories. My father had no friends but he knew the cowhands pretty well and that kind of rubbed off on me, the way they talked and such. Guess I've been working on this a long time." "But it only took about a year to put it together".

"In recent years I’ve played around with some ideas, hoping I might hit upon a combination that would transport today’s reader back to the untamed west of my grandfather.. "

This tale unfolds around down-to-earth characters that lived out their lives one day at a time, even as you and I, enjoying the good times and enduring the bad.

"I liked truck driving", said Wright. "It was the nearest thing to the old cowboy life. I hauled cattle from Western Colorado occasionally along with furniture. I guess I was a truck driver all my life except for WW2. Whether that's good or bad, I've often wondered."


All things considered, the mind set and true spirit of "The Old West" can be summed up in one word.

Freedom.