Verleen has been published in Dorothy Parker’s Ashes and the Blue Lake Review. Her work in Summerset Review was nominated for Best American Essays. Her novella, “The Trail to Cloud City” was published in the anthology, The Mountain Pass. Retired, Tucker lives in Steamboat
Springs, Colorado four blocks away from one of the best ski mountains in the world. Her favorite time is spent with her two grown sons and their families, the arts, and anything that involves the Great Outdoors.
For more information, contact the author at: www.verleentucker.com
Excerpt from “Mysteries Under the Western Sky,” an essay published in Summerset Review, Fall 2016 online edition:
The Spaceman came to Meeker under the influence of a dream. Word around town was that when he left his home back East he searched across the United States for two years on the guidance of the dream, finally making his way to our rural Colorado community in the Rocky Mountains. In his vision, he was told that once he found the Meeker Hotel he should not leave, that in time a spaceship would land and take him away. He set up camp in the foothills of China Walls, a small ridge north of Meeker. I do not know what member of the community coined the name the Spaceman, but it took. At that time, I am certain most of the eighteen hundred inhabitants of Meeker did not know his given name, Ron Kenward. I was one of the ones who didn’t.