Christine Byl’s Lookout (Deep Vellum, $25.95) offers a stunning portrait of a family firmly rooted to the land in northwest Montana. Told through numerous points of view, in authentic voices, and with a poetic ear for language, this is the kind of novel one becomes...
The Lost Journals of Sacajewea: A Novel (Milkweed Editions, $25) by Debra Magpie Earling upends the orthodox view of the Lewis and Clark saga, which paints Sacajewea as Toussaint Charbonneau’s wife and ignores the fact that he bought (or gambled for) her when she was...
In Headwaters: The Adventures, Obsession, and Evolution of a Fly Fisherman (Patagonia, $27.95), Dylan Tomine casts a line into his life of angling adventures with vivid detail, political and environmental astuteness, and wonderfully infectious humor. The narratives collected here take the reader all over the...
Avis DeVoto takes her rightful place alongside her husband, Bernard, in Nate Schweber’s lively and engrossing biography, This America of Ours: Bernard and Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the Wild (Mariner Books, $28.99). Previous biographers have given us Bernard, best known today...
Perma, Montana doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. That’s how tiny and insignificant the world-at-large considers this spot on the Flathead River, 30-some miles as the raven — or in this case, the magpie — flies, south of Niarada, population 27, also just as unknown to...
Who owns the land? Is it the person who can afford to buy it and enjoy mountain vistas from the windows of their mansion, the person who devotes their life to working the land and pulling sustenance from its bounty, or the person who feels...
Jamie Ford’s multigenerational and magical tale, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy (Atria Books, $28), has him well on his way to becoming the Gabriel García Márquez of Asian-American literature. Like García Márquez, Ford’s ability to paint a deep and vibrant story, while moving expertly...
In The Stone Sister (Black Lawrence Press, $25.95), Caroline Patterson offers a kaleidoscopic story of loss and redemption centered around a deep family secret and a state institution’s dark past. In the 1950s, infants with Down syndrome were routinely institutionalized, and their parents were told...
Ryan Busse’s memoir, Gun Fight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America (Public-Affairs, $29), provides an unflinching view into the modern gun industry. The origin of Busse’s connection to gun culture is perhaps similar to that of many Americans: drawn from a family tradition...
In The Truth of It All (Crooked Lane Books, $27.99), former war-zone correspondent-turned-novelist Gwen Florio once again brings her journalist’s attention to detail and dogged pursuit of the truth to a story that leaps from the page like a battle cry. Through the fiery eyes...