We are getting ready for a trip to Montana and what better way to get in the mood than to peruse some books set in Montana.

Fantastical

If you haven’t read fiction showcasing werewolves since Twilight, you need to read Patricia Briggs to see how it’s done right. If you are fans of Ilona Andrews, Jennifer Estep, Jim Butcher or urban fantasy the Alpha/Omega series is a fun series to add to your must read series list!

Criminal

This is on my to-be read list and falls into the True Crime category.

From Goodreads:

In Missoula, Krakauer chronicles the searing experiences of several women in Missoula — the nights when they were raped; their fear and self-doubt in the aftermath; the way they were treated by the police, prosecutors, defense attorneys; the public vilification and private anguish; their bravery in pushing forward and what it cost them.

Some of them went to the police. Some declined to go to the police, or to press charges, but sought redress from the university, which has its own, non-criminal judicial process when a student is accused of rape. In two cases the police agreed to press charges and the district attorney agreed to prosecute. One case led to a conviction; one to an acquittal. Those women courageous enough to press charges or to speak publicly about their experiences were attacked in the media, on Grizzly football fan sites, and/or to their faces. The university expelled three of the accused rapists, but one was reinstated by state officials in a secret proceeding. One district attorney testified for an alleged rapist at his university hearing. She later left the prosecutor’s office and successfully defended the Grizzlies’ star quarterback in his rape trial. The horror of being raped, in each woman’s case, was magnified by the mechanics of the justice system and the reaction of the community.

Historical

If Lonesome Dove intimidates you for it’s grit and length, or perhaps the Western genre is off-putting to you, this is a page turning western/romance/Christian fiction book. I read this back in circa 2010 and found it to be fast paced in the action department and slow burn in the romance arch. If you haven’t tried a western – this might be for you.

Youthful

This is a book I read for book club in 2018. It’s about being queer in rural Montana. It’s a coming of age story and a worthy read. I’m not the biggest fan of YA and this was readable (i.e. appropriate amounts of angst, not bursting with it.)

Quintessential

I haven’t read this one but this is the quintessential Montana book. I’ve seen the movie and have this on my to-be-read list.

From Goodreads:

Maclean grew up in the western Rocky Mountains in the first decades of the twentieth century. As a young man he worked many summers in logging camps and for the United States Forest Service. The two novellas and short story in this collection are based on his own experiences—the experiences of a young man who found that life was only a step from art in its structures and beauty. The beauty he found was in reality, and so he leaves a careful record of what it was like to work in the woods when it was still a world of horse and hand and foot, without power saws, “cats,” or four-wheel drives. Populated with drunks, loggers, card sharks, and whores, and set in the small towns and surrounding trout streams and mountains of western Montana, the stories concern themselves with the complexities of fly fishing, logging, fighting forest fires, playing cribbage, and being a husband, a son, and a father.