Michael D. Hartley is the author of Mosquitoes, a northern adventure story, The Challenge of the Skies, a non-fiction book on Canada´s bush pilots. A graduate of the University of Winnipeg, he is a former communications director with the Alberta Government and publications editor with Manitoba Education and Training. He lives with his family in Fort Garry, Winnipeg.

   Lion´s Gate is an epic story set in 1918 full of heroic adventure, tragedy, betrayal, and the triumph of the human spirit. The story charts a young cowboy´s discovery of his manhood, and his past, on a ranch in the southern Alberta foothills. Lucas Dockett escapes a harsh, lonely life to fulfill a dream of becoming a rancher on the edge of the Canadian frontier. Amanda St. Hilaire is a young woman every man wants. She is as brave and unyielding as the land she loves. Matilda St. Hilaire plots wild vicious schemes to block her daugher marrying below her station. Cattle boss Mark Milner is selfish and violent with the cunning head of a hyena. Julie Burke, a sweet-hearted whore, discovers a most unlikely love and bears him a son. Jake Rutley is a simple ranch hand who meets a terrifying fate. Blackfoot medicine man Hunting Hawk — steeped in ancient mysticism — bares scars of hatred and prejudice. A notorious madam, Tiffany Bilodeau, forges an opulent lifestyle through boom and bust. Former Flying Ace Ashby Jewitt is a proud rancher haunted by a lost love. Woodrow Jewitt, a brutal bully, rejects his birthright in favour of deceit and debauchery. Jacqueline Jewitt is an aging beauty tormented by a ruinous obsession to maintain a way of life eroded by winds of change.