I want to fit in some reading about Montana before I head out there. This page stores books I’ve heard of/had recommended to me.
From a comment left by an old friend (who now works as a librarian):
In the non-fiction arena, I’d recommend Norman Maclean’s “Young Men and Fire” about the most deadly (up until the last 15 years or so) forest fire in the West, where 10(?) smoke jumpers died. It’s his attempt to find some explanation of a tragedy that can’t really be fixed by just explaining it. Right next to the Missoula airport is a smokejumper’s museum, as I recall. I remember learning more than I wanted to know about how fires behave, too. Maclean is also the author of “A River Runs Through It” which most of us experienced in movie form. That novella is really quite lovely as well.
I also read “Bad Land” by Jonathan Raban, probably 10 years ago now. I can’t recall too much about it. It explores the settlement of eastern Montana by homesteaders. I recall one part in particular, the story of a woman who settled there named Evelyn Cameron. She photographed life on the ranch from the 1890s through the 1920s, and so left an amazing visual record of the hardships of that kind of life. I remember stopping in the town where the little museum is that held her photos. Annoyingly it was a Sunday and so I never got to see them. [Note: I actually read this book while I was out in Montana in April; although it's about a very different part of the state from where we'll be living, it is a great "travel" book (in the sense of a book about a place) and an interesting read for writers, as the author talks about some of his own process in putting the book together.]
In the vein of ranch life, I also liked “Breaking Clean” by Judy Blunt. She was a rancher’s daughter who became a rancher’s wife. In this country we’re not all born with the same opportunities, and this is a story of the limits of her life and how she escaped them. The parts about the realities of ranching life are really an education, as I recall. Children’s lives and opportunities and just what seems “normal” vary so much depending on where they grow up, and what their families expect and demand of them. Kids in Montana, if they go to university, can major in “equine science” - I mean, us Easterners hear that and think, “Huh? That’s a thing?”
As for fiction, I’ve only read a couple of books by Ivan Doig (and liked them), but he’s considered one of the big voices of Western fiction these days, and he sets his books in Montana.