She jogged. Then she entered a few shorter races, then a few longer races. Then a marathon, and another and another. Then - poof! - she was an ultramarathoner.
"Personal Best" is the story of Toor's transformation, set off against meditations on runners and running.
If you've ever wondered why runners run - so much, so far, so relentlessly - let Toor be your guide. To the big picture (running as a way of life) and the very small (the food, clothes, injuries and watches of runners).
A former writing instructor at the University of Montana, now at Eastern Washington University, Toor will be in Missoula this week to read from and sign "Personal Record." You'll find her at Shakespeare & Co., 103 S. Third St. W., at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
She's also the author of "The Pig and I: How I Learned to Love Men (Almost) as Much as I Love My Pets" and "Admissions Confidential: An Insider's Account of the Elite College Selection Process." Toor has an undergraduate degree from Yale University and an MFA from UM.
John Fraley came to know the Middle Fork of the Flathead River from the water, fishing and studying fish, boating, hunting, fur trapping and exploring.
Now, in "Wild River Pioneers," he tells stories from the wild region's pioneer history: its shootouts, murders, train robberies, hangings, gold prospecting, and bears both murderous and lovable.
Many of you know Fraley from his 30 years of work for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, mostly in the Flathead Valley. He's also an adjunct faculty member at Flathead Valley Community College, where he's taught wildlife conservation for two decades.
You'll thoroughly enjoy Fraley the historian, for his tales are "tall" but true. As in this story, dubbed "Grizzly Attack on Mount Penrose," from 1907:
"The big grizzly grabbed the doctor's left thigh in her teeth and shook him 'like a terrier does a rat.' Penrose fell backward into the creek with the grizzly clamped onto his leg. The bear then bit and crushed his left wrist, dropped that, and bit and shook his left breast area.
"Suddenly, the bear stopped mauling the doctor, but stood over him growling. After playing dead for a few seconds, Penrose grabbed for his gun again ..."
The rest, as they say, is history - this time, written by one of the Flathead's own.
If you like your history a bit more drawn-out - as in geologic time - pick up this tale of J. Harlen Bretz.
His is the story of Lake Missoula and its many floods - and the decades and disgrace required to convince the world that he had solved one of the great geologic mysteries of the West.
In "Bretz's Flood," writer John Soennichsen tells how, starting in the 1920s, Bretz combed the country between Missoula and the mouth of the Columbia River. For a geologist, the region is a wonderland of gullies, canyons, coulees, deserts and vast, rolling grasslands. Geologically, it is unique.
Bretz was the first to link that combination of geologic formations to one central event - a massive flood that occurred when the ice plugging Glacial Lake Missoula broke, unleashing great waves of water that scoured and shaped hundreds of miles of the Northwest.
The response from his colleagues: public and scientific humiliation.
And therein lies the heart and soul of Bretz's story - and now, Soennichsen's account. Bretz never gave up on his theory, which satellite photos confirmed many decades later - after it was too late to salvage his professional reputation.
Soennichsen does justice to Bretz's tale; he's a journalist by training and author of the well-received "Live! from Death Valley: Dispatches from America's Low Point," published by Sasquatch Books in 2005. His credits also include more than 250 articles, essays and short fiction pieces.
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