"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Steig Larsson
Part murder mystery, family saga, love story and financial intrigue with a heroine you will not likely forget. Lisbeth Salander is a 24-year-old pierced and tattooed genius computer hacker with a vulnerable heart and a terrifying capacity for sudden ruthlessness.
"The English Major," by Jim Harrison
Cliff is in his 60s, his wife has recently left him and sold their farm, so he sets out on a road trip to visit his son. Traveling cross-country, renaming the states and tossing puzzle pieces out the window, Cliff looks at his life and the people in it in new ways. See full review.
Poetry fans will be delighted to see these new collections: "The Truro Bear and Other Adventures" by Mary Oliver and "Ballistics" by Billy Collins.
And Montana collectors will want to make note of:
"The Norman Maclean Reader" edited by Alan Welztein
A generous selection of letters, as well as excerpts from a 1986 interview give a portrait of Norman Maclean, showing us a writer fully aware of the nuances of his craft. The letters find Maclean corresponding about fishing with Nick Lyons, about literature and teaching with Marie Borroff, about the Mann Gulch fire with Lois Jansson, and about General Custer with historian Robert Utley. Longtime fans of Norman Maclean will gain new insight into his life and career.
By the time you are reading this, the following books should be arriving in local stores:
"A Country Called Home" by Kim Barnes
Soon after medical student Thomas Deracotte and his bride Helen marry, the couple leaves Connecticut for a utopian adventure in the Idaho wilderness, where Thomas plans to open a medical practice. They purchase a farm sight unseen and discover that farming is hard work and Idaho is isolated. When Helen becomes pregnant, a local man named Manny is hired to work on the farm. Helen gives birth to Elise, but she soon wants freedom from her intolerant spouse and is lonely from the hours of nothing but motherhood. Thomas turns to drugs to alleviate his feelings of failure as a physician, as a farmer, as a husband, and as a father. This family drama looks at life in small towns where people look after their own, and learn how to survive their disappointments.
"Freeman Walker" by David Allan Cates
Slave boy Jimmy Gates is freed by his owner-father and sent to England for an education carrying his "free" papers and a copy of the Declaration of Independence. When his father drowns, Jimmy is apprenticed to a London workhouse and continues his education among prostitutes and an Irish revolutionary named Cornelius O'Keefe. He returns to the states where he grows into manhood on the battlefields of the Civil War and the gold camps of the American West, where he takes the name Freeman Walker. Missoula author David Allan Cates gives us much to think about in this adventure story full of ironies and epiphanies about freedom.
"The Eleventh Man" by Ivan Doig
Ten members of the "Supreme Team" (a 1941 undefeated college football team) are scattered around the globe serving their country in World War II. Ben Reinking is the 11th man, who is taken from pilot training to chronicle the adventures of his teammates for a military propaganda machine hungry for heroes. Ready for action, Ben chafes at the assignment but it does have one advantage, proximity to Cass Standish, a pilot based in Great Falls. Ivan Doig has taken the history of the 1940-41 Montana State College football team, whose 11 starting players were killed in World War II, and the Women Airforce Service Pilots based in Great Falls to give us his most powerful novel to date.
"Finding Beauty in a Broken World" by Terry Tempest Williams
Who else but Terry Tempest Williams can take the art of mosaic, a prairie dog community and a small town in Rwanda and give us insight into natural beauty, tumult and peace? Humans and animals have instincts to work, create, destroy and survive - broken pieces can come together to form a strong community, family and place. This is a beautifully written book by one of the best caretakers of our environment and our soul.
Two Montana history related titles coming in November are:
"Full-Court Quest" by Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith
The girls from Fort Shaw Indian School stormed the state to emerge as Montana's first basketball champions. Taking their game to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, these young women introduced an international audience to women's basketball and returned home with a trophy declaring them world champions. In 1997, Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith chanced upon a team photo and began documenting the history and exploring the legend of the girls from the Fort Shaw Indian School. The book conforms to the facts as best ascertained from tribal, state and federal records, vintage newspapers and journals, and the personal papers and family records shared by descendants of the players, their classmates and Fort Shaw faculty and staff.
"As Big as the West: The Pioneer Life of Granville Stuart" by Clyde Milner and Carol O'Connor
In this fascinating biography, Clyde A. Milner II and Carol A. O'Connor trace Stuart's remarkable trajectory from his birth in Virginia, through his formative years in the agricultural settlements of Iowa and the mining camps of Gold Rush California, to his rough-and-tumble life in Montana and his rise to prominence as a public figure. Along the way, we see Granville and his brother James battling bandits and horse thieves and becoming leaders of the new Montana territory. The authors explore Granville's life as a cattleman, including his role as the leader of a vigilante force known as "Stuart's Stranglers," responsible for several hangings in 1884, his abandonment of his half-Shoshone children after his second marriage, his government service in offices ranging from the head of the Butte Public Library to U.S. Minister to Paraguay and Uruguay, and his final years, during which he composed a memoir, "Forty Years on the Frontier," still widely read for its dramatic account of the era.
Mystery fans will be delighted to know that "The Snake Stone" by Jason Goodwin, featuring Investigator Yashim, and "An Incomplete Revenge" by Jacqueline Winspear, featuring Maisie Dobbs, will be in paperback in late November. Maybe you can suggest them for holiday stocking stuffers, or buy them for the perfect escape.
Three other titles I hope to read in the coming weeks include: "To Siberia" by Per Petterson, the author of one of last year's favorites, "Out Stealing Horses"; "The Glass of Time" by Michael Cox, whose "Meaning of the Night" was a great 19th century English murder mystery; and "To Catch the Lightning" by Alan Cheuse, a novel about Edward Curtis.
One last tidbit is the good news that the astonishing technology of Scanimation returns with sports-themed motion to delight people of all ages in "Swing!" by Rufus Butler Seder. Last year, "Gallop!" was an instant hit as we showed everyone the magical way horses galloped and monkeys swung from the trees.
There are many reasons to stop by your favorite bookstore this season. Take a break from the election coverage, start your holiday shopping, or escape with your favorite author or topic. Thanks for reading!
Barbara Theroux is manager of Fact & Fiction Downtown and a longtime Missoula bookseller who enjoys connecting readers and writers.
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