Montana has been the setting for many works of fictions. The novels set in Montana, as you might expect, range from excellent to average to poor...and everything in-between. On this page are some selected titles that people who enjoy reading about Montana might like.
Montana In Fiction
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The Big Sky - Originally published more than fifty years ago, THE BIG SKY is the first of A. B. Guthrie, Jr.'s, epic adventure novels of America's vast frontier. |
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A River Runs Through It and Other Stories - Just as Norman Maclean writes at the end of "A River Runs through It" that he is "haunted by waters," so have readers been haunted by his novella. A retired English professor who began writing fiction at the age of 70, Maclean produced what is now recognized as one of the classic American stories of the twentieth century. |
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Winter Wheat - By Mildred Walker. With an arid "dry-land" wheat farm as both its geographic and metaphoric center, Winter Wheat tells the story of eighteen-year-old Ellen Webb. Her Vermont-born father and Russian-born mother, married during the first World War, have come as homesteaders to Barton, Montana - a grain-elevator and general store. |
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Where the Sea Used to Be - By Rick Bass. The first full-length novel by one of our finest fiction writers, Where the Sea Used to Be tells the story of a struggle between a father and his daughter for the souls of two men, Matthew and Wallis-his protégés, her lovers. Old Dudley is a Texan whose religion is oil, and in his fifty years of searching for it in Swan Valley he has destroyed a dozen geologists. Matthew is Dudley's most recent victim, but Wallis begins to uncover the dark mystery of Dudley's life. Each character, the wildlife, and the land itself are rendered with the vivid poetry that is that hallmark of Rick Bass's writing. |
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The Bushwhacked Piano - By Thomas McGuane. As a citizen, Nicholas Payne is not in the least solid. As a boyfriend, he is nothing short of disastrous, and his latest flame, the patrician Ann Fitzgerald, has done a wise thing by dropping him. But Ann isn't counting on Nicholas's wild persistence, or on the slapstick lyricism of Thomas McGuane, who in The Bushwhacked Piano sends his hero from Michigan to Montana on a demented mission of courtship whose highlights include a ride on a homicidal bronco and apprenticeship to the inventor of the world's first highrise for bats. The result is a tour de force of American Dubious. |
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The Loop - By Nicholas Evans. A pack of wolves makes a sudden savage return to the Rocky Mountain ranching town of Hope, Montana, where a century earlier they were slaughtered by the thousands. Biologist Helen Ross has come to Hope from the East, fleeing a life in shambles, determined to save the wolves from those who seek to destroy them. But an ancient hatred awaits her in Hope, a hatred that will tear a family and ultimately the community apart. And soon Helen is at the center of the storm, by loving the wrong man, by defying the wrong man . . . by daring to lead a town out of the violent darkness of its past. |
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The Smoke Jumper - By Nicholas Evans. His name is Connor Ford and he falls like an angel of mercy from the sky, braving the flames to save the woman he loves but knows he cannot have. For Julia Bishop is the partner of his best friend and fellow “smoke jumper,” Ed Tully. Julia loves them both--until a fiery tragedy on Montana's Snake Mountain forces her to choose between them, and burns a brand on all their hearts. |
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The Horse Whisperer - By Nicholas Evans. A forty-ton truck hurtles out of control on a snowy country road, a teenage girl on horseback in its path. In a few terrible seconds the life of a family is shattered. And a mother's quest begins -- to save her maimed daughter and a horse driven mad by pain. It is an odyssey that will bring her to The Horse Whisperer, a man named Tom Booker. |
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The Divide - By Nicholas Evans. When the frozen body of a young woman is discovered in a -remote creek in the Rocky Mountains, the heartrending story of a family in crisis begins to unfold. Reaching back in time, members of the seemingly perfect Cooper family present their version of the events, emotions, and twists of fate that forever altered the benign course of their collective lives. |
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In Open Spaces - By Russell Rowland. Sibling rivalry turns sinister in Rowland's outstanding debut, which follows a Montana ranching clan as it struggles to survive the Depression, two world wars and family tragedy. |
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The Power of the Dog - By Thomas Savage. Set in 1920s Montana, Savage's 1967 novel introduces the Burbank brothers, whose lives are permanently altered when one falls in love with a widow and brings the woman and her son to live on their isolated ranch. |
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Montana Sky - By Nora Roberts. Jack Mercy's three daughters are strangers to each other, but to inherit his huge ranch they must live there together for a year -- a year that will bring them together against a terrifying unknown enemy as well as bringing each of them someone to make their dreams sweeter. A rich, stunning story of family, death, and love. |
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Perma Red - By Debra Magpie Earling. Earling follows the literary trail blazed by Louise Erdrich in her poignant if familiar debut novel, which explores life in the tiny town of Perma, Mont., through the adventures of the restless Louise White Elk as she struggles with a problematic passion for irresistible bad boy Baptiste Yellow Knife. The tempestuous duo's love-hate relationship is complicated by Charlie Kicking Woman, the local police officer who admires Louise from afar even as she breaks up his marriage. |
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Red Rover - By Dedra McNamer. Red Rover tells the story of three Montana men who get swept up in the machinations of World War II and its fateful aftermath. |
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Montana Midnight - David Emil Henderson, author of the thriller "Deadly Dividends," presents a novel of adventure and environmental conflicts in Jackpine, Montana, circa 1974, when "everything changed -- except Montana." |
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Winter Range - In Winter Range, the intimate details of ranching and small-town life are woven into the suspenseful story of three people struggling to survive, to belong, and to love in the chillingly bleak landscape of eastern Montana. |
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