Books

Ghost Puppet

Ghost Puppet

A Seattle attorney is killed on the Edmonds-Kingston ferry run and it looks like it was the work of a fisherman who lives on the Port Gamble S’Klallam Reservation. Seattle FBI agent Dodge Jones, a S’Klallam Indian, must solve the murder and face putting his own people behind bars.

Ghost Puppet is no longer available because it is being professionally published later in 2026 or early 2027. Look for it!

Read Sample of Book

Bigfoots I Have Known

Bigfoots I Have Known

Bigfoots I Have Known takes us to Bella Coola, Hoonah, and Walla Walla in search of Bigfoot. Readers wander remote forests; visit isolated towns and journey down lost coastal fjords in search of the mythological hairy beast. The book, however, is more than a travelogue. Readers meet a passing generation of Bigfoot enthusiasts responsible for making Bigfoot synonymous with the Pacific Northwest. The characters that make up the Bigfoot subculture prove more colorful than the creature itself.

Bigfoots I Have Known is available at local gift shops throughout the Olympic Peninsula. It will be available to order from this website in 2026. Please provide me with an email and I will notify you of availability.

Read Sample of Book
  • Call it middle age nostalgia, but while I was reading this book I was pleasantly reminded of traveling with my dad as he visited churches to encourage their congregations to help support Indian missions. The roadside snake handlers and Canadian Bigfoot hunters have all but passed, and it’s too bad.
    Sherry Guydelkon
    Tulalip See-Yaht-Sub (the official newspaper of the Tulalip Tribes)
  • (Schmanska) seemed to be hunting the hunters more than he was actually looking for Sasquatch…he would end up making a number of connections with the old men (credited) with pioneering the Bigfoot mythology. Many of them have since passed away, but their memories live on in excursions that Schmanska took with each between 1987 and 1993.
    Scott Morris
    The Arlington Times (Arlington, WA)
  • The places are real, the characters are real, and the Bigfoot belief is real in this first-person trip through small towns and valleys from Washington to Alaska during the late 1980s and early 1990s. It’s as much a story of a young man’s love affair with the Northwest as it is about the hairy, hulking creature known in many cultures: Yeti in the Himalayas, Sasquatch of Northwest Indian Lore, and, of course, Bigfoot.
    Diane Wright
    The Herald (newspaper of Snohomish County, WA)

Shuksan Descent

Shuksan Descent

Native American construction worker Gary Patrick is forced to stop working when he uncovers human bones on the Shuksan Indian Reservation. Out of work, nearly out of money, and convinced the decision was more about tribal politics than valid science, Gary decides to research the origin of the bones himself. The journey leads him to a secret so disturbing that it threatens to shake the very foundation of the Shuksan people

This is the book that got it all started. Ghost Puppet and Blackbeard’s Lost Head follow the story and characters in Shuksan Descent.

Read Sample of Book
  • The e-book Shuksan Descent tells the story of Gary Patrick, a Native American backhoe operator who discovers human bones at a construction site on the Shuksan Indian Reservation. Bureaucracy, politics, religion, history, intrigue, suspense, murder, and a treasure hunt (minus the pirates!) follow in this fun, locally inspired novel.

    Barrett Schmanska does a great job describing some of the beautiful places in which his characters live and work, generally north of Seattle along the Sound…overall the book flows very well. I did struggle to keep track of a few relationships, but it didn’t matter in the end. The later chapters of the book center around a specific circle of individuals who are well known to the reader by the end of the story.

    By the time I read half-way through Shuksan Descent, I just had to know how it ended. I’m a picky reader, so that’s saying something. And I appreciated learning how hard it was for tribal members to obtain formal education just a few generations ago. Finally, I don’t want to give anything away, but I was both pleased and surprised by one tribal perspective of a scientific concept which I take for granted. I didn’t see it coming, either. It was a nice bonus, and a thought-provoking way to end this story.

    The cover is an illustration of a scene in the book drawn by the late Robin James, best known for the Serendipity Books series of children’s books.
    Chris Whitwer
    The Shuksan Descent was reviewed in Wallyhood Newspaper by Chris Whitwer and reprinted in the Seattle Post Intelligencer