Baron Birtcher Wins Prestigious Award for 'Knife River'

Bestselling novelist Baron Birtcher’s Knife River wins the Will Rogers Medallion Award

PORTLAND, OR, UNITED STATES, June 24, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Knife River, the latest novel by bestselling mystery writer Baron Birtcher, has been awarded the Will Rogers Medallion Award. A prestigious annual awards program that recognizes excellence in Western literature and media, the Will Rogers Medallion has been awarded for over two decades. The Will Rogers Medallion honors legendary writer and cowboy entertainer Will Rogers, whose work embodied and demonstrated the traditions and values of the American cowboy. The awards ceremony will take place in October 2025 in Rogers’ hometown, Claremont, Oklahoma.

Birtcher’s Knife River won top honors in the Mystery category of the Will Rogers Medallion Award. In addition, Knife River has been named a Finalist in the Foreword Indie Awards, as well as a Finalist for the Spotted Owl Award, which honors the best book of the year written by a writer in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia.

About Knife River: Longmire meets Yellowstone in the 1970s in the latest installment in Birtcher’s critically acclaimed Ty Dawson mystery series, Knife River is a taut, tense, and tantalizing tale. The series, which has drawn favorable comparisons to such esteemed literary luminaries as Elmore Leonard, James Lee Burke, and Larry McMurtry, features Korean War veteran, rancher, and small town sheriff Ty Dawson. In Knife River, a sharp, seamless, and suspenseful crime thriller, Dawson fights to keep the peace in 1970s Oregon while facing a long-buried secret from his town’s past.

Sheriff Ty Dawson is called upon to investigate the illegal hunting of bald eagles, and a suspicious death discovered after the unwelcome return of an infamous town scion, whose presence incites old hostilities in a town where nearly everyone has a motive.

Meridian’s former son has returned—now famous and successful—to record his band’s third album, to be followed by a celebratory concert to feature his new music, and to be filmed for theatrical release. Despite Dawson’s attempts to dissuade them, the concert proceeds as scheduled. But tragedy strikes unexpectedly. And as Sheriff Ty Dawson sifts through the legions of suspects with a motive to kill, he uncovers a long-buried story that threatens to shatter the underpinnings of a small American town.

Beautifully written, masterfully plotted, atmospheric and cinematic, Knife River is a riveting tale that unfolds against the richly-drawn landscape of the rural West. Resplendent with elegance and grit, told with wisdom and honesty, and crafted with a brilliantly rendered historical backdrop, Knife River is an extraordinary, engaging, exquisite crime thriller.

Published by Open Road Media, Knife River is published in hardcover (ISBN: 978-1504086523, 342 pages, $35.99) trade paper (ISBN:978-1504086370, 342 pages, $19.99) and eBook ($9.99) editions and available wherever fine books are sold.

Baron Birtcher is the winner of the Silver Falchion Award; Winner of Killer Nashville Readers Choice Award; and Best Book of the Year Award for his Sheriff Ty Dawson Series. A Los Angeles Times and IBMA bestselling author, Birtcher has also been nominated for the Nero Award, the Lefty, the Foreword Indie, the Claymore, and the Pacific Northwest's Spotted Owl Awards. Birtcher divides his time between Portland, Oregon and Kona Hawaii.

Founded in 2009, Open Road Media is based in New York. The Open Road Media catalog contains over 10,000 titles and includes such iconic authors as William Styron, Pat Conroy, Alice Walker, Joan Didion, and Pearl S. Buck. Open Road Media’s titles are distributed by Independent Publishers Group and available through such wholesalers as Ingram Book.

Maryglenn M. Warnock
Maryglenn M. Warnock
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