Young Adult

Lukas’ annual summer visit with his cousin, KC, on the Johnson family farm, takes a perilous paranormal turn into paleontology when the 13-year-olds accidentally ‘resurrect’ a 65-million-year-old T. rex skeleton. Mekwen Calf Robe, a Ph. D student, whom they met at the nearby Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology takes them hiking in Alberta’s Badlands where the youths frighten a doe and its fawn which serve as a meal that revives the T. rex. Mekwen is First Nations and identifies the creature as the “Wîhtikow Rex” – mate to the one destroyed by her ancestors using the buffalo jump that became part of the modern-day Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park. As a hereditary “Watcher”, her family has ‘watched’ for the ‘return to life’ of this second T. rex – which Lukas and KC inadvertently facilitate on the Dry Island mesa. The trio is horrified as the creature ‘reconstitutes’ into flesh and blood, feeding on animals accustomed to grazing safely atop Dry Island. They recognize two facts: they must dispose of the Wîhtikow before it gains the strength and the agility to descend from the isolated mesa; and they’ll be acting alone – who would believe the return of the most terrifying predator to walk the Earth?

The Lukas Encounters, by Stuart Adams, is a three-book Young Adult series published by Rock’s Mills Press. Set in Alberta, Lukas Johnson is a teenager who is pretty much normal—except that paranormal things happen to him.

The book will launch in October and Dr. Philip Currie has agreed to speak at the event--his work is mentioned in the book and a major find at the location of Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park. "Mahkoos", a Metis elder will also participate--he was part of the original writing process that was carried out at Prince Charles Elementary. “Lukas and the Wîhtikow Rex” is a 56,000-word Young Adult adventure novel with a dinosaur theme that will also appeal to adults. The book is set in Central Alberta, and takes place at the Tyrrell in Drumheller, the Johnson family farm near the Park, and in the Park itself. Located along the Red Deer River with extensive Badlands formations, Dry Island is known not only for the solitary mesa and the world’s most northerly bison jump, but also for containing an important long-lost, century-old Albertosaurus (a T. rex predecessor) find that confirms that the Theropods lived in groups. Wîhtikow is a mythical Cree creature that is cannibalistic – recent discoveries have indicated that T. rex was also communal.