The Stayton Public Library is excited to announce an author visit with Oregon author R. Gregory Nokes on Thursday, January 31, 2019, at 7:00 pm in the E. G. Siegmund Meeting Room. There will be a reception accompanying the event. R. Gregory Nokes has traveled the world as a reporter and editor. He is the author of three non-fiction Western histories. His latest book is The Troubled Life of Peter Burnett: Oregon Pioneer and First Governor of California, published last year (2018) by Oregon State University Press. Troubled Life traces Burnett’s life from his birth in Tennessee to Missouri where he was a defense attorney for Mormon leader Joseph Smith following the 1838 Mormon War, to his leadership of the first major wagon train to Oregon in 1843. Five years later, in 1848, he followed the gold rush to California, where he helped establish the city of Sacramento and got himself elected California’s first governor. Burnett was known for his advocacy of strict racial laws to ban African Americans from the West Coast. Greg’s book is the first biography written about this talented, but deeply flawed leader in the early American West. Greg’s earlier books are Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon and Breaking Chains: Slavery on Trial in the Oregon Territory also published by Oregon State Press. Breaking Chains was a finalist for the 2014 Oregon Book Award for non-fiction. Greg spent more than forty years in journalism. As a reporter in Washington, D.C. for The Associated Press, he covered the State Department and traveled with several presidents and secretaries of state. He retired to embark on a second career as an author and lecturer on Western history. A native of Oregon, Greg did his undergraduate work at Willamette University and attended Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow. The Stayton Public Library’s speaking events for 2019 are sponsored in part by the Stayton Friends of the Library and the Marion County Cultural Corporation.