Parker M. Nielson is the co-author of Thunder Over Zion: The Life of Chief Judge Willis W. Ritter. With fellow author Patricia Cowley, Nielson tells what the Deseret News calls “an anecdotal story but a candid one, with impressive documentation to support it . . . Ritter is portrayed here as an arresting character – a person who possessed both brilliance and idealism. But he also had character or personality flaws that caused him to do outrageous things . . . According to the authors, Ritter was so audacious and condescending that by the end of his life he had lost all his friends – and had become, for some at least, a tragic joke in the legal community.” Nielson received his J.D. from the University of Utah College of Law, and has seen Ritter preside over his courtroom. Nielson’s other works include The Dispossessed: Cultural Genocide of the Mixed-Blood Utes. He will appear on a Biography Writing Panel at the Utah Humanities Book Festival.

– University of Utah Press