M. Mark Miller, Author

I’m seeking representation for The Magic Bandana, my 80,000‑word memoir about a boy raised on the unforgiving ground of a Montana ranch who arrives at college in 1963 believing rules keep the world right—only to discover that the rules often are the problem.

I am a former newspaper reporter, editor, and journalism professor. I’ve published seven books, including Encounters in Yellowstone, a finalist for the High Plains Book Award for Creative Nonfiction, and my work has appeared in regional and national magazines. I am currently at work on a novel that explores similar emotional terrain through fully fictionalized characters and events.

am working on a Montana family saga in which a recently tenured history professor returns to the ranch where he grew up, clears out a long‑closed tack‑room bedroom, and uncovers journals, artifacts, and decades of silence that force him to confront the cost of misinterpretation, injury, and emotional distance—both in his family and in himself—before carrying home a manuscript that softens him and a marriage ready to be lived with more presence and truth.