 Recorded Books presents Hell and Back by Craig Johnson. Narrated by me, George Goudel. For Anthony Red Thunder. Your laughter continues to lighten the way. From T.S. Eliot. Hell is one self. Hell is alone. The other figures in it mirror projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. One is always alone. Acknowledgements. All haunting is regret. Whether it's the things we've done or the things we haven't and in that way we are all possessed by something. The limbo of unfinished business. Hell and Back is a book about the phantoms of regret and loss that, hopefully, grant the sheriff new life. Like everybody else, I sometimes dwell on things I shouldn't. Such as, what is the scariest thing I can think of and the answer is pretty simple. Not knowing who or where or why I am. Readers who know my books are aware that I like to tread in the margins. The place where different genres can mix and hopefully enhance one another like a fine meal. Hell and Back isn't a simple amnesia story, but rather it's about a man fighting to reclaim his very existence against an active and malicious adversary. There are times when the good sheriff doesn't know when to leave well enough alone. And this is one of those times. I was made aware of the current horrifying problem that involves murdered and missing indigenous women when I came up with the idea for Daughter of the Morning Star. I knew there had to be a backstory that would provide an underpinning to the more mystical aspects of the tale, and remembered that a few years ago I was talking to a venerable Cheyenne elder Leroy Whiteman about the aviates hell miss, a taker of children, something of a boogeyman to keep the young ones from wandering off too far. I asked him, were a being like that could originate? And not so hardly he told me that in his long life he had actually given it some thought. His theory was that the wandering without was a conglomeration of all the lost souls that had been banished from the tribes over the centuries, the murderous and the insane, the ones that had been driven out into the wilderness to die alone. His belief was that there was and always had been something out there waiting to take these souls that no one else wanted, and that they had banded together to satisfy a hunger for companionship. Where would the perfect feeding ground for a creature like the aviates hell miss possibly be? A storage place for the tender young souls it finds so irresistible. Of the items and a long list of incredible wrongs that have been implemented against the native peoples, the boarding schools that separated children from their families cut their hair, forbade them from speaking their native language, and a million other atrocities must be forefront. With the discovery of unmarked gravesites scattered across the West, the true horror of these places and their genocide is only now becoming known. These were children. This book is different, and even though this isn't the first time I've said that a novel goes out there in the topography of loss where Walt's been for the last seventeen years, it's never been at this depth. Memory is the fuel of haunting, and the complexity of that is that sometimes the unadorned and unvarnished truth becomes camouflaged and sugarcoated by nostalgia in the hostile world I've attempted to create. A western gothic romance with tinges of horror. The northern Cheyenne have a saying that you judge a man by the strength of his enemies. I couldn't think of a better statement about Walt Longmire, whose humor and absolute conviction make him truly formidable. But what if the souls he's dispatched are out there somewhere in a ghost town waiting for him? Get off the bat, I must thank Leroy Whiteman, who passed away this past year. His insight into the culture and history of the Cheyenne people will be sorely missed. Another person to thank would be my best buddy, Marcus Redthunder, the model for Henry. Sample complete. Ready to continue?