First Take

Longtime Yumans may know or remember Mike Thompson, who in the 1980s tested munitions at Yuma Proving Ground and was a curator of the base museum. He’s long since retired and living in San Angelo, Texas, but he’s been dedicating himself to fiction writing. His recent Western novel, “The Turbulent Trail,” just won second place in the fiction category of the Arizona Authors’ Association’s 2017 Arizona Literary Contest.

Set in 1891, the novel opens at the Yuma Territorial Prison, where the hero of the story is an inmate who plots and executes a successful escape, then goes on an Old West-style odyssey.

Thompson, who dropped by the Yuma Sun offices during a recent visit to the area, says he’s juggling several other writing projects, among them “Cocaine on the Rocks,” based on the actual discovery in the ‘80s of a load of cocaine that apparently had been delivered to YPG by a misdirected smuggler flying an airplane.

Congrats, Mike, and keep on scribbling.