Steve Merle Scott , author of "Celebrate The Sinner"

S.M. Scott was raised and educated in Oregon, Alaska, France and Africa. Born in the Willamette Valley, his father, grandfather and great grandfather were Oregon lumbermen. When he was eight, his parents packed up the family and their portable sawmill and moved to Anchorage, Alaska where they began cutting homesteader timber in the summers and teaching school each winter. He later returned to Oregon to pursue undergraduate studies at Linfield College. Along the way, he has studied economics, biology, French and medicine. He attended medical school in Colorado, undertook surgical training at the University of Utah and completed his cancer training at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. He and his family now live in Salt Lake City in the warm company of Saints and sinners. He is a practicing orthopedist and cancer surgeon. In “Celebrate the Sinner” , Steven Merle Scott pulls readers into the heart of his home state of Oregon just as the Great Depression takes hold. Taking advantage of his lumber industry roots, Scott has created an historical fiction that explores the forces that shape, and deform, an individual. Merle and Marie are an uprooted couple struggling to succeed in an isolated lumber town. As the new owner of a bankrupt sawmill, Merle must make a series of difficult decisions if his business and family are to survive the harsh economy. Marie hopes to make a home for her family, including their adopted son, but no matter how hard she tries, she simply feels like a slab of rough-cut lumber, unworthy of paint and without a future. When faced with outright failure, Merle turns to the KKK to financially support his business. Meanwhile, the couple's young son, Teddy, finds mentors in the unlikeliest of places, the Bucket of Blood Roadhouse.

Steve Merle Scott