Robert C. Bartsch

Who am I and how did the book come about?

I grew up in inner city St. Louis, the eastern terminus of the Lewis and Clark journey, fascinated by stories of their 1803-6 expedition, and most anything written about western wilderness travel. There were the seeds, but how did a successful veterinary pathologist come to write an historical novel?

After stints practicing in large animal Nebraska, small animal St. Louis and as vet for the St. Louis Zoo, I enrolled in a graduate program in veterinary pathology at the University of Pretoria Faculty of Veterinary Science. Word spread quickly among biologists that there was a crazy American nearby with experience immobilizing large wild animals. I loved every minute of that training and especially the wild jaunts to the bushveld to anesthetize animals for wildlife biologists.

An invaluable by-product of nearly five years in South Africa was an introduction to the historical fiction of Wilbur Smith, a Northern Rhodesian born author. His books of Africa are electrifying: I think his latest book is number 36. Nearly all are international best sellers with over 125 million sold. Well, his books taught me the breadth of African history and wetted an appetite to write similar stories about the parts of America I love.

Returning to the US I taught pathology near the Lewis and Clark western terminus at the Washington State University vet school. The excitement of Africa was not there. In those days there was a great need for laboratory services for practicing veterinarians; with entrepreneurial fervor I helped found a laboratory centered in Phoenix. After twenty successful years at assisting colleagues with laboratory data on sick critters of all kinds, I hung up the sword and swore myself to that other long-postponed love: creating an historical novel . . . but, what about?

By this time I was hooked on the beauty of Southeast Idaho, Southwest Montana and Yellowstone. Flyfishing became a passion, the country itched to be hiked, floated by raft and canoe or camped in. I brought the entire family on river expeditions, camps and floats: over 300 miles of the Yellowstone, 100 miles of the Snake and many miles of the Missouri tributaries. I needed to write about this fabulous area.

My oldest grandson was twelve when he gave up his spring vacation to traipse through two miles of snow to our freezing cabin en route to the Yellowstone Research Library where he copied journals and documents. This was the beginning of the grueling research that finally gave fruition to The Devil’s Playground; the grandson is now 25 and the book is published.

The book is technically an historical novel but with a wrinkle: it is the amazing true story of some of the earliest pioneers of old Dakotah Territory that became Montana vexed by the unbelievable tales of the high Yellowstone Plateau, of the cavalry and scientific expeditions who sought to explore and catalog what became “America’s Wonderland.” Gold strikes, drought, vicious highwaymen, vigilante justice and wars with Native Americans stymied the early settlers; the government-backed seekers became lost in bottomless snow. These men were resilient and tough, and in 1872 gave us the world’s first national park. I only added the dialog to their story.