Bud Shapard

Bud Shapard retired from the Bureau of Indian Affairs after 24 years of service in the Southwest and in Washington, D.C. For the last 10 years of his tenure he supervised research of American Indian history for numerous tribes. After he retired he continued his fascination for the events a people of the Old West. He has published several articles in various magazines and wrote the Bureau of Indian Affairs' first regulations defining American Indian Tribes. Shapard now writes books about people and events in the Wild West of the 1800s three of which are in print.

Shapard’s first book was a nonfiction biography, Chief Loco: Apache Peacemaker, was awarded 2011 New Mexico Book Award for the best book on a Multi-Cultural Subject by the New Mexico Book Co-op. Chief Loco was a leader of the Warm Springs Band of Chiricahua Apaches. Although seldom mentioned prominently by modern writers, Loco influenced more tribal members than any other Apache chief. He was the only Apache leader to make a lasting peace with both Americans and Mexicans. This biography tells the story of an important Apache leader against the backdrop of the Apache wars and the tribe’s eventual removal from its homeland in New Mexico to prison camps in Florida, Alabama, and Oklahoma.

His second book, a novel, Medicine Woman’s Revenge, delivers a tale of the highs and lows in the life of a young Chiricahua Apache woman during the mid-1800s. It is an action packed historical novel set in the Southwest and the Northeast. Dah-zhonne, a young Chiricahua Apache girl, harbors a fierce obsession to avenge the deaths of her parents who were killed by Mexican troops in a vicious unwarranted attack on her village when she was a child. She is adopted by a wealthy white doctor; renamed Jada Morgan; and taken to Philadelphia, where she is educated in a posh finishing school for girls and the Women’s Medical School of Pennsylvania. Even though Jada has sworn to settle the score with Colonel Lorenzo Garcia, the man responsible for her family’s brutal murder, retribution appears unlikely until she returns to the Southwest and is captured by the ruthless Colonel Garcia with six other women to be held as sex slaves in his hacienda.

This book is a good read if you enjoy reading historical fiction with a strong female character; or about the Old West; the Apache wars; romantic escapades; Victorian medical practices; traditional Apache customs, and adventures on Indian reservations in the 19th Century.

Shapard’s newest novel, The Life of Mollie Sheppard, an Irish immigrant who came to America in 1852 as a young child. By the time she was twenty-one she was the youngest bordello owner and madam in the Arizona territory. Mollie amassed a fortune while operating a wildly successful bordello in Prescott between 1867 and 1871. This story of Mollie Sheppard is historical fiction, based on what is known about Mollie's life before, during, and briefly after a November 4, 1871 Yavapai Indian attack on a stagecoach near Wickenburg, Arizona.

Ultimately a teenage prostitute influenced Mollie to quit prostitution, but after she left the sex business, her life remained filled with adventure, chaos, violence, and romance. From her impoverished beginnings in Ireland to hobnobbing with Washington’s elite in the U.S. Capitol, Mollie lived boldly and controlled her own destiny. This story will appeal to anyone interested in the old West, strong women, and the invincibility of the human spirit.

Shapard is currently writing about the effects of alcohol on settlers, soldiers and Apaches in the Old West.