Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, Man of Two Worlds

Michael Lance Ritter was born in Tyler, Texas. He has lived in Oklahoma, Colorado, San Francisco, the Sierra gold country and now Sonoma County, CA. He has spent 40 years studying the history, geography, settlement pattern and ecology of the American West.



Michael earned an M.A. in history at Sonoma State University and was a Fellow in the PhD history program at the University of California, San Diego, studying the American West. He has been a parent, teacher, editor, screenwriter, entrepreneur, world-class athlete and college football player. Michael is a member of the Western History Association, Western Writers of America, Robinson Jeffers Association, Association for the Study of Literature & the Environment and the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.