Reviews for The Last Eleven Days of Earl Durand:

June 14, 2005

If killers have a rightful place in history, then Metz has restored Durand to that pantheon.

July 29, 2005

Earl Durand’s last days have been shrouded in myth, but South Carolinian Jerred Metz unraveled the truth of a Wyoming legend.

September 18, 2005

It’s the stuff of which legend is made—the loner, the mountain man who gets arrested for poaching, breaks out of the small-town jail, guns down those trying to return him to justice, then dies amid gunfire. In the case of The Last Eleven Days of Earl Durand, the story that most would dismiss as overblown fiction comes to life as author Jerred Metz goes behind the headlines to talk with those who knew Durand or were real-life participants in the drama that played out in northern Wyoming, with ties to Montana as well.

In the era shortly after Bonnie and Clyde and other desperadoes led crime sprees across the Midwest, the hunt for crack shot Durand became national news. After his death at the bank, he left grief across Park County and debate over how a venture that Durand said was meant to provide meat for a hungry family could turn out so wrong.

The first person technique makes reading the book like listening to folks pulled up to a fire and talking to friends.

August 14, 2005

The chorus of voices conveys the community’s combined horror and fascination with Durand.

It's all here—vivid as when I was a boy—the life, capture, flight, and last days of the poacher turned murdered, Earl Durand. This book will excite your emotions, sadden you, puzzle and anger you. It happened just that way. I remember.

Alan K. Simpson
Author and Former Senator

Wow! Jerred Metz's page-turner is so quick and hot on the eyes that it reads as if it had been ripped from today's front-page news. So, brew a large pot of ceffee and turn up the light. This exciting true Wyoming adventure, "as told by" those who lived it, won't let you rest till you've turned the last page.

Larry K. Brown
Old West Historian & Author

Reviews for
Drinking the Dipper Dry:
Nine Plain-Spoken Lives

St. Louis Jewish Light
September 19, 1980
Nancy Shapiro

The book reads as if all these tales were just waiting to be told, all these storytellers sitting in limbo waiting for Metz to produce the key that would unlock their lips.

September 19, 1980

The material is marvelous: blunt, moving, a rich record of lives remembered...Plain-spoken but not simple, these very personal records are well worth reading and thinking on. Metz has done a fine, sensitive job on shaping, pacing and arranging the narratives.