Characters in Paradise: A Yellowstone Memoir

To stand out as a character in the Paradise Valley of Montana, you have to be quite a character. And Fred Shellenberg is one of them -- a good-natured man with a dry sense of humor and enough stories to fill a book. The Livingston native recounts a lifetime of tales in Characters in Paradise: A Yellowstone Memoir.

The family man and World War II veteran interweaves local flavor and his own family history and life experiences, including his military service and his years on the Alaskan frontier.

Russell Chatham, renowned artist and Livingston resident, says in the introduction, ''The vignettes are clearly all real, and they create a historical framework that brings to events to life. Perhaps this recollection's greatest strength is that it is told honestly and simply without a hint of artifice, in the voice of a proud, bona fide native son.''

-features 22 black-and-white photographs.
-5 1/2 x 8''
-produced by Sweetgrass Books, sweetgrassbooks.com

Fred Shellenberg was born in Livingston, Montana, in 1923. Except for the three years he spent in the military and three years he lived in Alaska, Fred spent his entire life in Livingston. He occasionally tells newcomers he never could save up enough money to leave. The joke is sometimes misunderstood; his little town is one of the nicest places on earth.