Deadwood Dick and the Code of the West

Bruce H. Thorstad was born in Minneapolis just a mile west of the Mississippi River, making him, at least by one common yardstick, a native-born Westerner. Growing up in the northern Wisconsin towns in the 1950’s and ‘60’s his imagination was fueled by the dozens of TV westerns of that era. “Northern Wisconsin is big-woods country…it’s not the West, but it’s relatively unpopulated. I couldn’t look at a hill or a hayfield without mentally populating it with stampeding buffalo or attacking cavalry.” Thorstad concedes he “played cowboys long after it became uncomfortable to admit it, after most neighboring kids had switched to baseball and football. “In a way,” he says, “I’m still at it.” Thorstad lives with his wife and children in Orange County, California, where he is the editor of OFF DUTY America, a nationwide general-interest military magazine. As “Paydirt,” his nineteenth-century alter ego, he’s a two-time winner of End of Trail, the largest of the annual Old West shooting competition…giving him an insider’s knowledge that makes this and his other "Gents" novels so thrillingly authentic.