After enjoying a lavish multi-course dinner at his favorite French restaurant in San Francisco, an establishment so luxurious that “you need a wallet full of credit cards to eat there,” Russell Chatham admitted that his banker had finally reached his breaking point. “He wanted to...
Matt Pavelich has done something wondrous in The Harrows: A Novel of the American Century (Bar R Books, $24.95). This five-generation story of the Harrow family rolls off the pages with such liquid grace and poetic clarity that one feels a new Montana classic has...
Some themes may be too big for one story. Love, the overarching theme of Shann Ray’s Where Blackbirds Fly (University of Nebraska Press, $27.95), is explored throughout the five novellas that make this novel. This is because love, in Ray’s handling of it, contains much...
The utter largeness that is the legacy and artistic relevance of the late Jim Harrison seems impossible to contain. His novels, novellas, screenplays, and poetry collections have left a once-in-a-generation mark on the literary landscape. Perhaps equally celebrated (or condemned), his life was lived with...
This Place the Gods Touched Earth (Montana Arts Council and Montana Historical Society Press, $19.95) brings together a strong and vibrant sample of work by all 11 of Montana’s past and current poets laureate, since the honor was established in 2005 by the Montana State...
Callan Wink takes another step in establishing himself as a major writer of the American West with his new work, Beartooth: A Novel (Spiegel & Grau, $28). Wink, the author of two previous books, Dog Run Moon (a short story collection) and August (a novel),...
Sheriff Jules Clement of the fictional town Blue Deer, Montana has returned, at long last, and fans of Jamie Harrison’s mystery series will be delighted with the latest installment, The River View: A Jules Clement Novel (Counterpoint, $28). As with earlier books in this series,...
All journeys are journeys of the soul, as well as the body and mind. This is delightfully true for Ammalie, the hero of Laura Pritchett’s new novel, Three Keys (Dell, $20). Leaving her empty Chicago home — she’s recently widowed, middle-aged, and estranged from her...
Current Montana poet laureate Chris La Tray blends personal memoir and Indigenous history in Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home (Milkweed Editions, $30). Raised with only hints of the Métis and Anishinaabe (Chippewa) heritage of his father’s side of the family, La Tray...
Dave Carty captures the spare poetry of Montana landscapes, specifically the Shields River Valley, in his poignant novel Red is the Fastest Color (Guernica World Editions, $18.95). He takes the reader through the seasonal changes that dominate life in this region, and those mirrored in...