John S Newman grew up in a small town in rural northern California. He worked in agriculture and later owned a working cattle and wheat ranch in Montana, about which he wrote a history, “The Tipi Ring Ranch, Before and After the Buffalo.” Along the way he attended Stanford where he studied creative writing and the works of the Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday and the western icon, Wallace Stegner. He has worked as a river guide on the great rivers of America, and for over a decade has been a volunteer fire lookout on Mt Tamalpais. His interest in native affairs and culture began at an early age when he helped construct the Ishi trail to honor the last surviving member of the Yahi tribe. He also studied the Washoe language with the tribe near Lake Tahoe, their ancestral home. While ranching in Montana he became acquainted with the neighboring Cheyenne tribe, sweated with families, and was invited to be the sole anglo to participate in the 400-mile Ft Robinson break-out run from Nebraska through Pine Ridge and back to reservation in Lame Deer. His goal as a writer is to create thrilling, character-based stories set principally in Montana and the west, where natives and anglos are compelled to confront a dangerous but spiritually infused world lurking beneath the dominant safe society we all assume is invincible. In the process, they learn from one another and overcome personal demons and historical trauma. This motivation lead John to write a debut eco-thriller novel – Buffalo Dreamers -- about Sam Comstock, a young Iraq war vet who finds healing from his suicidal PTSD condition through rescuing a herd of condemned buffalo along with a ragtag band of renegade natives.

“A psychologically scarred Iraq War veteran casts his lot with a diverse group of Native Americans desperately trying to save a band of bison from slaughter in Newman’s modern Western novel. Over the course of this novel, Newman writes with a vivid sense of place (“The snow fell all night, cleansing the blood-stained ground and creating a white canvas upon which creatures large and small could paint the tracks of the new day”) and a palpable respect for Montana’s land and its many denizens. A compelling and empathetic story of salvation.”
– Kirkus Reviews