OK, that might be a rather opinionated headline. But after 18 years as a nonnative transplant to the West, I am fine courting controversy and risking argument in order to state what I truly believe, that life in the West has a special timbre and tenue to it, a chromacity hard to explain to those who haven’t watched the sun draw down on the Pacific or seen the desert glow like glass being fired. I am not of this place, the West, but I occupy it now as fully as it occupies me. That is why I am so excited to be a winner in the 2011 Nonfiction Writing Contest at Torrey House Press, a small, smart publishing house whose mission it is to reflect the beauty and culture of the American West. The piece I won Second Place for, “A Kingdom Like No Other,” is dear to me as it explores my relationship with my husband’s family homestead in northern Arizona. I thank Torrey House for giving me the chance to have this story published!