The Parowan Bonanza

In the sun-baked Nevada desert, Bill Dale earned his nickname the hard way: Hopeful Bill, the prospector who refused to see a rock that wasn't hiding a fortune. His companions are a talking parrot named Luella and a desert turtle, and if anyone in the mining camps laughs at his relentless optimism, Bill simply smiles and heads back to the canyons where no one else has bothered to look. Then one day, his pickaxe strikes something that glitters. A gold vein. Millions. Overcome with joy, Bill crows to Luella about his luck before heading into the recorder's office to file his claims. But Luella has a talent for repeating exactly what she hears, and suddenly everyone in town knows what Bill has found. The Parowan Bonanza is born, and so are Bill's problems: claim jumpers, schemers, and the complicated matter of a woman named Doris Hunter, who seems newly interested in a man she once dismissed. B.M. Bower writes with the kind of easy authority that only comes from knowing a landscape and its people intimately, wrapping her adventure in dry humor and the stubborn, ridiculous hope of a man who believes the desert owes him something beautiful.