Earl Durand author to speak at libraries, Homesteader Museum – Powell Tribune

Autumn and winter on the homestead can be a good time to focus on maintenance tasks, as well as planning for spring. This is especially true for the first few years on a new homestead.

Some people who homestead have enough land to raise food and live “off the grid.” However, you can also bring homesteading aspects into your lifestyle if you’re not in a rural area. For example, growing herbs or using a hydroponics system to grow lettuce is easy anywhere.

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Jerred Metz, author of “The Last Eleven Days of Earl Durand,” will speak at the Cody and Meeteetse libraries and at the Powell Homesteader Museum in collaboration with the Powell Library. The occasion for his talks is the publication of “The Last Eleven Days of Earl Durand” as a graphic novel.

“In December of 2019 I met, by accident, one of the Icons of the Golden Age of comics, the artist Vic Carrabotta. He was 91 at the time. I gave him a copy of the original book. A week later we met again,” Metz said. “He told me he read the book in one day and decided that if I would work with him on it as a graphic novel, it would represent his master work, the work he wanted to be remembered by. We met, often a couple of times a week, during the whole of the Covid lockdown. In 2022 the book was finished and published.”

The events of Durand’s March, 1939, spree of crime and its tragic end is part of the history, lore and legend of Park County. Metz will describe his working with Carrabotta, in a presentation illustrating the crucial events of those days. At each of the three locations he will present a particular theme, a way of looking at the original book and the graphic novel that lends insight into the events and Park County residents who were closely involved.

“Much of what happened was uncanny, bizarre,” Metz said. “As the editorial in the Denver Post that appeared the day after the events ended said, ‘The most imaginative creator of pulp fiction never, in his wildest dreams, produced as wild a story as Durand lived in his last eleven days. If it had been presented on the screen, no one would have believed it could be real.’”

Metz added that the 15 people whose interviews are featured in the original book were interviewed in Cody and Powell between 1978 and 1980.

“I also visited to speak about the original book in 2005 when the book was published,” Metz said. “I have hoped that I would have occasion to visit Park County again and am happy that this new version of the book will let me do that.”