Gary J George

Gary George spent his teenage years in Needles, California, and his Smoke Tree novels are set in the Mojave Desert of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Gary was blessed with a long and happy marriage to his beloved, Ginny Boyd, author of the book "Birdy Bird." When Ginny died in January 2018, Gary could not write for a while. 

However, during a seventy-mile backpacking trip across the desert from the Colorado River to the middle of the Mojave National Preserve in May of that year, he began to come to terms with her death.

 When he returned home, he discovered that immersing himself in his writing allowed him a few hours of relief from sadness each day, and he began work on "The Carnival, The Cross, and the Burning Desert." There are now eleven novels in the Smoke Tree series; in the winter of 2024, Gary was diagnosed with severely blocked arteries in his heart and underwent open heart surgery in March of 2024. He has published a book about his recovery after that procedure, "Out of the Cabbage (CABG) Patch." He recently completed the twelfth book in his Smoke Tree Series, "Mojave Desert Jezebeth.