Tom Laughlin is a retired history teacher and coach living in Grand Haven, Michigan. He taught American and European History and coached varsity cross country and eighth-grade basketball for over thirty years. He is also a retired Lieutenant Colonel after twenty-three years of active and reserve duty in the army. His first book, "Summer of ’71", was a memoir of hitchhiking across the United States and Europe in 1971. "Portrait of a Prairie Woman" is based on the life and adventures of his maternal grandmother living on a homestead in Montana in the early 1900s. He and his wife Jackie have two sons who are married, with two beautiful grandchildren each. Jackie and Tom still enjoy traveling through life together.