Paul Watkins

Like many frontier territories, the desert attracts misfits, loners, drifters, and as Watkins puts it, weirdos.

In the new novel, each of those types is represented in a small community of people protesting the, quote, "green energy gold rush." But really, what can they do? What power do they have to defeat a corporate project already underway? Is protest futile, delusional, self-serving? There's a lot of questions this novel raises, like how could a mother decide to live in the desert when her ex-husband and child have moved across the country for a better job and better schools? How has Rose, the new novel's protagonist, been shaped by having had a mother, father, and stepfather who were each addicted to alcohol or drugs? 12-step programs have always been part of her life as a witness or participant.

Watkins' new novel is titled Yellow Pine.

That's also the name of the solar desert project in the book.

Her previous novel, I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness, is her most autobiographical book and quotes from the memoir My Life With Charles Manson by her father, Paul Watkins.

The cover describes Paul Watkins as Manson's number two man.

His role was procuring teenage girls, recruiting them to join the Manson family.

Claire was six when her father died of cancer.