When best-selling author Michael Crichton died of lymphoma eight years ago at the age of 66, the world lost one of its most celebrated producers of Father’s Day gifts and quasi-technical summer blockbusters. Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain are just two of the 29 tomes—both fiction and nonfiction—that he saw published during his lifetime, with two more thick books somehow coming out in the years following his death.
When a person can let a couple of mostly finished manuscripts collect dust in a drawer, that’s generally a sign of strong productivity. But when they can just flat out lose an entire book for years and years without their spouse even knowing about it, that’s something else. The prolific author’s widow Sherri Crichton recently stumbled upon a long-forgotten novel by Crichton while traipsing through his archives, the Seattle Times reports. “When I came across the Dragon Teeth manuscript in the files, I was immediately captivated,” she explained in a statement. “It has Michael’s voice, his love of history, research, and science all dynamically woven into an epic tale.” And probably a really juicy film role for either Jeff Goldblum or Sam Neill.
The novel is based on the storied rivalry between paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, as the two men battled one another to become the top dinosaur bone finder of the 19th century. (So, there might be roles for both Jeff Goldblum and Sam Neill. Fingers crossed.) The book—which is told “through the adventures of a young fictional character” who apprentices for both scientists at different times—will be published by HarperCollins with minimal editing in May 2017. That’s just in time for Father’s Day.