DINO-SIZED ROADIE. Local author B.J. Hollars and his daughter, Ellie, embarked on a 2,500-mile trip along the Montana Dinosaur Trail. Soon, the adventure will be shared through Hollars' forthcoming novel. (Submitted photos)

Will humanity go the way of the dinosaur? That’s the anxiety that underlies Dinosaur Dreams, the latest nonfiction travelogue by Eau Claire author B.J. Hollars. Subtitled “A Father and Daughter in Search of America’s Prehistoric Past,” the book is as much about the present and the future as it is about the 165 million-year reign of those fascinating “terrible lizards” adored by children of all ages.

Hollars is among the grown-ups who never quite lost an affinity for dinosaurs, so in 2023 a road trip in search of their fossilized remains seemed like a good way to bond with his dino-loving 9-year-old, Ellie. (Hollars – a prolific author whose past works have tackled everything from the Civil Rights movement to UFOs – embarked on a similar quest to trace the Oregon Trail with his son, Henry, for the 2021 book Go West, Young Man.)

The father-daughter odyssey coincides with one of the hottest summers on record, a fact that helped inspire the book’s more existential angles. In the prologue, Hollars describes a viral photo of park rangers mugging with a thermometer that reads a scorching 132 degrees Fahrenheit.

It’s accompanied by the caption, “This is like dinosaurs having their picture taken with an asteroid.” Except, in humanity’s cause, our end may be hastened not by a piece of stellar debris but by our own environmental excesses.

"We can't live our lives fearing worst-case scenarios. All we can do is live our lives. Overhead, billion-year-old stars shine upon us. As they did for the dinosaurs too."

B.J. HOLLARS

AUTHOR

“In many ways dinosaurs are a timeless subject and certainly beloved by many,” Hollars explained in an interview, “but as someone who’s not a dinosaur expert by any means, I wanted to try to tie (the narrative) into something I had a little more familiarity with” – namely, the anxieties of living in the 21st century.

The book details the father-daughter team’s two-week, 2,500-mile quest to hit all 14 locations on the Montana Dinosaur Trail, which encompasses museums and field stations across the state, one of the most fossil-rich places in the United States. In addition to viewing and learning about fossilized dinos large and small, the duo also dig into their subject, quite literally: They unearth some dinosaur fossils with the help of Tom Hebert, an enthusiastic amateur dinosaur hunter.

Hebert, a former student of Hollars (a professor of English at UW-Eau Claire), helped inspire the trip. A former insurance salesman who created a dinosaur-promoting nonprofit and helps the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe manage its fossil assets, Hebert is one of numerous memorable characters found in Dinosaur Dreams's pages. And while passionate, Hebert doesn’t have academic credentials as a paleontologist, a fact that causes him some trouble and highlights a rift in the dinosaur community which surprised Hollars.

“I was wholly unaware of it when I started this research, but the more I reached out to some folks in the field, there were some people who just stonewalled me entirely and were not interested in talking to me — perhaps because I didn’t have the right degrees,” Hollars said.

Whether because of professional elitism, ethical conflicts, or personal animosity, tensions among those in the field potentially have major ramifications, he said.

"A lot of people don't think the history of the world is important until things start happening. That's when they realize that the past really is the future."

JACK HORNER

AMERICAN PALEONTOLOGIST

Dr. Allen Grant, is that you?! (No, it's B.J.'s daughter, Ellie. Hard to tell though.)

Nonetheless, Hollars and his daughter found many open doors and open arms as they criss-crossed the fossil-rich Big Sky Country. Like the dinosaurs themselves – from the gentle duck-billed Maiasaura to the ferocious T. rex – the human beings they encounter are diverse, complex, and surprising.

Along their 2,500-mile trip they meet everyone from a collector whose home overflows with dinosaur bones, an eagle-feather headdress, and even a human hand in a jar; to the director of a creationist-themed dinosaur museum who engages in a civil conversation about the merits of scientific vs. faith-based approaches to the past; to paleontological rock star Jack Horner, one of the inspirations for Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park.

“A lot of people don’t think the history of the world is important until things start happening,” Horner tells the pair. “That’s when they realize that the past really is the future.”

Far enough in the future, Hollars concludes, we’ll all be fossils – which makes it all the more important to savor the moments we have in the here and now. As he concludes under a dark Western sky, “We can’t live our lives fearing worst-case scenarios. All we can do is live our lives. Overhead, billion-year-old stars shine upon us. As they did for the dinosaurs too.”

Dinosaur Dreams will be published Oct. 1 by Bison Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press. B.J. Hollars will speak about the book on Tuesday, Nov. 4, at the Chippewa Falls Public Library and Tuesday, Nov. 18, at the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library in Eau Claire. Learn more about the author and his work at bjhollars.com.