Finalist Reviews

On the Way to Somewhere Else: Changing Lives and Changing Oil is a High Plains Book Awards 2024 finalist in the Art & Photography category. The book is a testament to one man’s optimism that every person who commits to oneself has potential. Bill Simmons, founder of MasterLube, has proven that with the right support, structure and training, lives are changed. In the last 40 years, over 1,400 men and women have “graduated” from MasterLube and gone on to fulfilling careers.

The “MasterLube Impact” is addressed in the foreword written by Bob Wilmouth, president of Rocky Mountain College. Wilmouth tells the story of Bill Simmons’ quest to challenge the destined outcome with a new vision for someone who had never imagined success until they came to work at MasterLube.

The book text is sparse to let the images tell the story. Tim Keane‘s photography is unscripted and revealing. "I was inspired to photograph this because at the heart of this story lies persistence, determination, and a journey toward self-fulfillment – values deeply rooted in a community dedicated to helping one another succeed. Witnessing a culture of mutual support and honest vulnerability is humbling, and the profound impact is evident in the faces, postures, and attitudes of this remarkable group of comrades. If this work inspires others to embrace the same spirit, I would be truly grateful." Todd Forsgren edited the book and curated the exhibit at Rocky Mountain College Ryniker-Morrison Gallery. “Editing this book has been one of the most personally impactful things I’ve done since arriving in Billings in 2020. Tim and Bill have become good friends and seeing the community that MasterLube has built around MasterLube has made me feel even more at home here!”

The underlying principle at MasterLube is to help their employees leave for a better future. There isn’t a lot of career potential in changing oil. But Simmons decided that providing a full-time life coach, classes and assistance with college and trade school applications, networking and introductions to future employers was good for his – MasterLube’s – business. People work harder when someone believes in them. Testimonials from the employees speak of kinship, of respect for themselves and the management. Teamwork is fostered, and to quote one, “MasterLube becomes part of your family. I’ve never experienced a team I can lean on for support inside and outside of work. This makes me want to be the hardest worker.” Another comment, “MasterLube saved my life. Pure and simple.”

Employee turnover is encouraged. To get a job at MasterLube, all that is needed is one paragraph about your greatest achievement and your contact information. “Lubers” can come back as many times as needed. The MasterLube motto: Ladies & Gentlemen Serving Ladies & Gentlemen.

Shari Nault is president of the High Plains Book Awards and author of “Buffalo Tango.”

Living River by Dave Showalter, a finalist in the Art & Photography category of the 2024 High Plains Book Awards, is a scholarly work explaining the challenges facing the 40 million users of the Colorado River. A meticulously researched and photographed book, it tells of the river’s journey from its headwaters in Rocky Mountain National Park to its eventual end at the Gulf of Mexico.

Showalter breaks the chapters into seven distinct ecosystems of the living river and introduces his readers to advocates for the river’s preservation and restoration. His photographs, from ground level to arial views, are simply beautiful. In addition to explaining the historical background of the several states and Mexico which use the waters of the Colorado, he presents maps illustrating its path. All the tributary rivers certainly resemble the human nervous and circulation systems.

With Showalter’s many years of traversing the Colorado’s path and his immense knowledge of the geography of its land, he succinctly lays out the immediacy of the issues facing all of the users of the river and the necessity of the stakeholders to come to an agreement on how to preserve this national treasure. To quote from a previous reviewer, “… an informative examination and celebration of the beautiful and endangered Colorado River and its importance for people and wildlife.”

Louis Wolff is a retired mental health worker for the Mental Health Center and the Idaho State Hospital. He plays pickleball almost daily and gives some of his time to the Billings Public Library.

A finalist in the art and photography category of the High Plains Book Awards, Prairie Interlace, edited by Michele Hardy, Timothy Long and Julia Krueger consists of a review of fiber art in the Canadian prairie provinces from the 1960’s to the end of the 20th century.

With the exception of tapestry and art quilts, fiber art remains that most neglected of art forms, making this book long overdue.It places fiber art at the forefront of modernism during this period, much as artists Theodore Waddell, Isabelle Johnson, the De Weeses and others formed the basis of modernism in painting in Montana during the same period.Montana’s own Mary Miegs Atwater is mentioned as almost singlehandedly reviving the art and craft of hand weaving during the same time frame in the United States.

A wide variety of fiber art is included, including loom and off-loom weaving, tapestry, rug hooking, knitting and crocheting.Both flat and three-dimensional works are covered.A special section covers the revival of rug hooking by the women of the Standing Buffalo Dakota First Nation and the Katepwa Lake Metis road allotment communities.These rugs, called tiospaye, represent traditional patterns passed down along the generations of First Nation and Metis women.

The book also discusses the history of some of the weaving workshops in Canada which are, sadly, now closed.It also discusses various trends in fiber art and influences such as feminism.Although I am a weaver my favorite piece is a crocheted sculpture by Phyllis Green entitled, “Boob Tree,” which has pink breasts on a tree trunk which resembles a coconut palm.

I must confess that although there are many art books in our home, I have almost never read any of the text – I only look at the pictures.And this book is loaded with beautiful photographs.I find most art history and criticism dense and difficult for a lay person to understand,But I highly recommend Prairie Interlace for anyone interested in fiber art and its history.

Jaime Stevens is a fiber artist, avid reader, gardener and part-time pickleball player who lives in Billings.

I have never been interested in visiting New York, but after reading The Umbrella House by Colleen Nelson – a finalist in the Young Reader/Middle Grade category of the High Plains Book Awards – I would love to visit this cultural and historic landmark that is at the heart of this story. Although this book is fiction, Umbrella House is a real house with a rich history. The abandoned building was occupied by squatters who restored it. The city government then legalized their occupation of the building.

In this story, Scout and Roxy, two middle school students and tenants of the Umbrella House, are talented storytellers with their own YouTube channel. They produce a video series that highlights life in their East Village community. When they learn about a video contest by Veracity News, the best friends know this is an opportunity to highlight their skills. Creating a winning video isn’t the hard part, coming up with a compelling story is – until they learn of a rich mogul who has been buying up buildings in their community, wanting to buy Umbrella House. They know that if he is able to buy their building, he will destroy it in the same way that has been happening to many buildings in their neighborhood. He is working to get permission from the city council to purchase this building, their home. Scout and Roxy have their video project. They must tell the story of the Umbrella House and the people who live there – and save the building. Maybe, just maybe, they can create a video worthy enough to win the Veracity News contest and compelling enough to sway a city council to vote “no” on the purchase of the building.

In The Umbrella House, Nelson creates characters that are colorful, eclectic, and real. The two main characters are creative, passionate, and inspiring. The collection of characters in this book come from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds; together, they make a neighborhood family.

Colleen Nelson does a masterful job of taking several individual stories and weaving them together to make a heartwarming and inspiring story for readers of all ages. Although this book is about so much more, Nelson sums up the heart of the story in this passage: “Saving our neighborhood was an ongoing battle between community spirit and corporate profit, struggle and privilege. In a city like New York, this fight could go either way.” If you enjoy realistic fiction and like to read uplifting stories about young people who believe they can make a difference in their community, I highly recommend reading The Umbrella House.

Desiree is a retired librarian, college professor, and technology integration specialist from Billings. When she is not reading, she loves to be outdoors birding.

Coyote Queen by Jessica Vitalis is the story of twelve-year-old Fud, a girl who has survived tough times with her mother, even periods of homelessness. Now they live with Larry, a man who was once kind but is now demanding and cruel. Bullies target Fud at school, so she has no relief from stressful relationships. While trying to fall asleep each night, Fud listens to the howls and yips of nearby coyotes to distract her from her problems. Fud starts to believe that she is turning into a coyote as her anxiety escalates. This realistic fiction novel that addresses the issue of emotional and physical abuse is a finalist in the Young Reader/Middle Grade category of the High Plains Book Awards.

The plot of this novel may be unusual, but it is perfectly paced to keep readers’ interest. Fud decides to compete in the Miss Tween Black Gold Pageant after finding out that the winner will receive two thousand dollars in prize money. Fud’s mother said, “If we leave Larry, we’re back on the streets.” (p. 45) Fud believes that winning the prize money will allow them to leave their abuser. A wrench is thrown into Fud’s secret plans when Larry decides to move the family onto a houseboat that he is fixing up. Tension grows as Fud prepares for the pageant and Larry continues to work on the boat. The author keeps these two storylines working against each other to keep the suspense high. Will she be able to win the prize money before the boat is complete?

The well-developed characters, especially Fud, are another strong element of this book. Fud is socially immature at the beginning of the novel. Having no friends and living in an abusive household add to this problem. Fud reacts to a rude comment from her bully, Ava, by physically attacking her. “Hot rage coursed through me. My vision tunneled until I saw only Ava’s sneering face. I snarled and lunged toward her… She threw up her hands to protect her face from my flailing fists.” (p. 136)

She starts to gain confidence as her new friendship with Leigh develops and as she practices the social skills needed to compete in the pageant. Reflecting on her mistakes and admitting fault show Fud’s emotional growth. “Maybe she was right. Maybe I’d taken my anger out on her when the person I’d really been angry at was myself.” (p. 166) Fud is finally able to advocate for herself by telling the truth about abuse in her home and standing up to her mother. Readers will empathize with Fud and will root for her success.

Students who enjoy reading with a box of Kleenex next to them will appreciate Vitalis’s storytelling skills.

Andrea Doles is the librarian at Ben Steele Middle School and enjoys reading historical fiction.

A Sky Full of Song, a middle grade novel by Susan Lynn Meyer of Boston, Massachusetts, is a finalist in both the Woman Writer category and Children’s Middle Grade category for this year’s High Plains Book Awards.

Meyer has written two other middle grade novels, Black Radishes and Skating with the Statue of Liberty. Those books are also works of historical fiction. She is the author of three picture books as well. She won a Sydney Taylor Honor Award for Black Radishes, a Jane Addams Peace Association Children’s Book Award, and the New York State Charlotte Award.

A Sky Full of Song is one of her most recent works of historical fiction. The story dramatically begins in 1905 in Ukraine where Shoshana, her mother, and her little siblings are assaulted. The family decides to flee the persecution of the Russian Empire and join their Papa and big brother who are already in America. They make the arduous journey to North Dakota, leaving their beloved home, friends, possessions, and family cat behind.

The novel’s protagonist, Shoshana, is just eleven. Even though Shoshana and her family now must live in a sod house on the North Dakota prairie, Shoshana finds happiness because her family is reunited and can practice their Jewish faith. Fitting in and learning English do not come easily for all the family members. Through the family’s experiences, Meyer writes about identity, religion, and immigration. She includes many details about the hardships of life on the prairie, including poverty, women’s issues, disease, and the harsh weather. More important, though, Meyer does not shy away from addressing the fear and prejudice Americans had toward immigrants, and the discrimination that Jewish immigrants faced when they arrived in America. Meyer briefly presents the Dakota people and the displacement caused by settlers.

Meyer’s writing is clear; the plot moves at a nice, well-organized pace for a middle grade novel. A Sky Full of Song is a quiet novel centered on what it means to be a family, find a home, and be accepted into a community – all while staying true to oneself.

For fans of Sandra Dallas’s Tenmile, or readers looking for an alternative to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House series, A Sky Full of Song would make a thoughtful, compassionate selection.

Precious McKenzie, PhD, is the Director of Advancement at the Yellowstone Art Museum and is the author of over forty books for children. Her recent novels for teens include “The Selkie” (BeaLuBooks), “Ruffian” (BeaLu Books), and “Infestation” (Lerner/Darby Creek). Her picture book, “Cinder Yeti,” was chosen by the Library of Congress Center for the Book/ National Book Festival “Great Reads from Great Places” in 2020.

Let Me Tell You About My Mom is a delightful romp (for kids and kids at heart) through the native fauna of the western plains. Ron Hayes provides the wildlife portraits within the book, alongside informative and layered text from Casey Rislov. Let Me Tell You is a finalist in the High Plains Book Awards Children’s Picture Book category alongside Lily and Maia: A Dinosaur Story by Jack Horner and Border Crossings by Sneed B. Collard III.

Let Me Tell You features well-known (and a few lesser-known) residents of our expansive High Plains region: black and brown bears, loons, swift foxes, mountain goats, bobcats, elk, badgers, pronghorn antelope, deer, moose, and burrowing owls. Hayes and Rislov take a singular focus specifically on the care and behaviors of mothers and their young in each of the above species. Hayes’ photos, of course, are a delight: at times panoramic, cute, tender, and silly. Rislov’s layered text brings additional depth, and can be adjusted to age, interest, and tiredness levels of its intended readers. Rislov provides an informative paragraph written for the young, emergent reader, followed by a richer, more technical expansion paragraph for older readers. This is a true strength and will allow this book to be read and re-read for many years.

It seemed only fair in the process of reading and writing this review to share it with its intended audience. I can say that it was a joy to curl up with my toddler, look and talk about all the species pictured, and read the emergent reader text. I look forward to the day when we pull it off the shelf and re-read again, perhaps diving a little deeper into the text each time. Let Me Tell You About My Mother is a fantastic example of how picture book nonfiction can be fun, informative, and engaging. At a time when it is easy to “other” nature and the natural world, Let Me Tell You draws children into the wonder and tenderness that exists between mothers and babies of all kinds.

Carla Nordlund is a farmer, writer, editor, and parent based in Absarokee, MT.

Future fossil-hunters will find friendship and adventure in paleontologist Jack Horner’s newest picture book Lily and Maia: A Dinosaur Adventure. This fantasy adventure, a finalist for Children’s Picture Book in this year’s High Plains Book Awards, features a young amateur paleontologist, Lily, who spends her summer vacation at the Montana ranch where Jack and his best friend Bob Makela dug up a Maiasaura.

Mr. Horner, a world-famous paleontologist and author, encourages children to explore and connect to science through Lily’s adventure. In this book, eight-year-old Lily sets out to camp alone in the Badlands, planning to use her knowledge and tools to hunt for fossils. Early the first morning, Lily awakens to find a Maiasaura outside her tent. What follows is an adventure in friendship through space and time. During this adventure, Lily makes a scientific discovery she is excited to share with her parents. “… I think I discovered evidence that Dr. Jack Horner was wrong…” What a discovery! While Lily’s adventures alone in the Badlands add excitement to the story, the thought of an eight-year-old alone gives this reader pause.

Young illustrator Grace Hattrup’s beautiful watercolors bring to life the stunning landscape of the Badlands and a dinosaur known only through fossils. This book is perfect for any budding paleontologist disappointed that dinosaurs are extinct and ready to explore on their own.

Allynne Ellis is the Children’s Librarian at Billings Public Library and enjoys reading children’s books and sharing the love of reading with children and their families.

The depiction in Renoir’s famous painting The Reader of a young woman sitting alone, deeply engrossed in a book, fits most people’s idea of reading as a solitary pursuit. In the beginning, though, reading is always collaborative. We all start our journey as readers in the laps of other people, with someone else experiencing the books with us. This is what sets children’s picture books apart from other genres of literature: every single one is designed to be interactive. The best of them, therefore, engage not only young people but also the adults who will be reading them out loud several – or several dozen! – times. Children’s Picture Book finalist Border Crossings written by Sneed B. Collard III and illustrated by Howard Gray is one such example.

In the story, Collard recruits two different ocelots – endangered in North America – to explore the impact on wildlife of the border wall between the United States and Mexico. Each cat makes a journey in search of a mate, encountering along the way various other species that call the borderlands home. Unsurprisingly, the border wall creates insurmountable difficulties, and Collard’s text focuses on the environmental impact, with striking illustrations by Gray of the territory and the various plants and animals that live there.

The book includes expository back matter defining some terms and giving deeper background information for the text, and Gray’s beautifully rendered illustrations mean that children and adults alike will learn to recognize javelinas, ocotillo plants, and the ferruginous pygmy owl. It is a credit to Collard that he does not shy away from including a scientific term like “ferruginous,” and it gives adult readers the chance to pause and indicate to their budding literature lovers that it is okay not to immediately know how to pronounce something. The pacing and the arc of the narrative allow room for questions about the meanings of words as well as time to properly appreciate the detail of the accompanying pictures.

Although most adults probably think about the border in political terms, the purpose of the book is to help young people – and their adults – see it as a series of interconnected ecosystems and habitats. Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to try a different perspective, and Border Crossings is a wonderful start in shifting the perception of the border away from a barren wasteland and toward something more universally relatable: home. This is one of those picture books with layers to satisfy both the reader and the read-to.

Julie Schultz is the head buyer for This House of Books, the bookstore co-op in downtown Billings, and also serves on the board of directors for the High Plains Book Awards as well as that of the Montana Bookstore Trail.

The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lako­ta, and an Amer­i­can Inheritance by Rebecca Clarren is a finalist for the 2024 High Plains Book Awards in the Memoir/Creative Nonfiction category. Clarren is an Award-win­ning jour­nal­ist who writes about the Amer­i­can West.

The author’s ancestors were Russian Jewish refugee immigrants. She learns that several of them – the Sinykin family – homesteaded in South Dakota after 1908 in what became known as Jew Flats, and also settled in the Black Hills. It was the springboard for the accumulated wealth of the extended family.

She learns that the land was made available through the 1862 Homestead Act, which the United States acquired by subjugation of Indigenous Lakota Sioux. It was once part of their expansive homeland, which had been reduced to several small reservations. Generally, the neighbors did not know each other.

“While my family continued to leverage their Jew Flats land … their Lakota neighbors” became extremely poor, she writes. “Taking this land from the Lakota wasn't theft. But it allowed such harms to persist.”

Seeking counsel of California Judge Abby Abi­nante (Yurok) about this entangled history, Clarren wants to under­stand how she can atone for the wrong­do­ing. She is advised to study Jew­ish teach­ings “because jus­tice works best when it is ground­ed in one’s own culture.”

An adage from the Talmud is: “if a homeowner knows that a single beam has been stolen, the owner's duty is to make amends.” She wants to return her family’s “piece of the stolen beam” by writing this book and giving a portion of their wealth to Indigenous organizations.

Rebecca Clarren considers herself a “tourist of personal history.” She explores family history through scrapbooks, photographs, newspapers, government documents, interactions with family members, and dialogue with a few Lakota and other Indigenous leaders.

Nearly half of the narrative pages involve review of policies and racist attitudes and violence. The author describes mistreatment of Jews in Europe, including Tzarist Russia and Hitler’s policies. She details American policies toward Natives and attitudes of many Americans toward immigrants, including Jews.

Clarren reviews U. S. Government mistreatment and destruction of traditional Lakota and other Native culture:every policy between the 1862 Homestead Act and the present. She concludes with discussion of Indigenous activism and potential future Federal policies. There is little new in those pages.

That discussion forms a basis for following the lives of extended Sinykin family members. Homesteading was the jumping-off experience that led to entrepreneur activities in Rapid City, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and other places. It includes individual experiences and activities, failures, and successes during more than half a century. She also presents the historical and current context and words of her living Lakota friends.

The two narratives are randomly portrayed and intertwined, especially in the second half of the book. The author presents a strong and compelling summary of the history of injustices to Jews and Natives, and her attempts to make amends. Rebecca Clarren writes: “This entire book can be read as a land acknowl­edg­ment to the Lakota Nation.”

There are 239 Notes, 3 pages of Resources for Further Research, 31 illustrations, and a 13-page Index.

C. Adrian Heidenreich, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Native American Studies and Anthropology at Montana State University Billings.

Holding Fire by Bryce Andrews is a finalist for this year’s High Plains Book Awards in both the Memoir/Creative Nonfiction and the Big Sky Award categories. High Plains Awards veterans may remember his Badluck Way, which won the 2015 prizes both for First Book and Nonfiction.

Joining a growing coterie of authors such as Betsy Gaines Quammen and Taylor Brorby, Andrews reexamines the “Western myth.” As his title indicates, his particular focus is the American fascination with firearms. He sees gun culture as a legacy of American attitudes toward the frontier, a place to fear and conquer by whatever means necessary. The result is a persistent latent hostility toward both the land and its people, uneasily coexisting with countertraditions of reverence for nature and mutual aid among neighbors.

A direct descendent of Puritan colonial governor and chronicler William Bradford, Andrews is rooted in American history. He admires the determination and dedication of his ancestors, but ultimately comes to reject Bradford’s famous revulsion toward a “hideous and desolate wilderness full of beasts and wild men,” in favor of a more accommodating, mutualistic relationship to his continental home. His evolution is guided by his family, by a master blacksmith, and by a Salish Kootenai neighbor.

The title Holding Fire has multiple dimensions. Idiomatically, it means refraining from shooting, but in the context of the book, it also refers to the palpable power that a gun gives the person brandishing it, and, as readers discover, to the process of forging iron into various tools.

In Down from the Mountain, his previous book, Andrews defuses a potential environmental conflict by designing and constructing an electric fence to keep grizzlies out of a cornfield. Likewise, in Holding Fire Andrews approaches a complex, large-scale conundrum by finding a practical, individual “handle.” The Western fascination with firearms is embodied for Andrews in the Smith and Wesson handgun he inherits from his grandfather. Though he views this weapon, designed for killing human beings, as different in kind from the long guns he uses hunting deer and elk, he cannot bring himself to drop it into a crevasse; it is, after all, a family heirloom and an example of fine craftsmanship, which, as a man who respects and works with tools, he admires.

Through step-by-step descriptions, aided by black-and-white photographs, Andrews meticulously details the stages both in his thinking and in the resulting actions. The book’s methodical pace, tracing the development and eventual fruition of a plan to both honor the family gift and reject the legacy of violence it represents, might strike some readers as unnecessarily complicated and perhaps a bit tedious. For Andrews, though, a thing, whether tool-making or writing about it, must be accomplished without cutting corners.

Andrews finds that an intentional alteration of circumstances linking one man and one tool has repercussions that, while admittedly insufficient to remake the entire history of the West, may contribute to the restoration of one small Jocko Valley farm, and place one family, including a baby daughter who arrives in the book’s final chapters, on a path to a less aggressive and more fulfilling life in the West.

Bernard Quetchenbach is recently retired from the English Department at MSUB.

Teen angst, exacerbated by COVID lockdown and an intense desire to be thin, lead Calgary highschooler Charlotte Bellows to fall prey to a seductive disease.

The Definition of Beautiful is author Bellows’ account of her near-fatal struggle with anorexia. It is a finalist in both the First Book and Memoir/Creative Nonfiction categories of the High Plains Book Awards.

Even at age nine, weighing 80 pounds, Bellows thought she looked “gross” and felt ashamed of her body. Her descent into a dangerous spiral begins innocently enough when she and her mother attempt dieting together. Understandably, when much of life seems out of her control, she learns she can at least control her weight. By 14, she becomes obsessed with eating sparingly and fanatically counting calories in her quest to lose more and more pounds.

Curiously, once in the grips of this obsession, the author never mentions the numbers on her bathroom scale, but she does describe some physical consequences of severe weight loss. Lacking padding, the skin on her backbone is “bruise puce” from sitting in hard school chairs. All 24 of her ribs are clearly visible and she delights in counting them. Despite being chronically cold and losing chunks of hair, she lies to her parents about her caloric intake and secretly discards food her body desperately needs. Lethargic and weak, she misses muscles she no longer has while literally starving to death.

At night in a dreamlike state, an emaciated figure called Ed frequently appears, luring her along and promising to protect her. His name is an acronym for Eating Disorder, and for a time, he becomes the most significant “person” in her life.

Fearing hospitalization where she would be forced to eat, Bellows contemplates suicide. She writes, “Death is the one thing that is ultimately in my control.” And later, “I scream at society for telling me to lose just a little more weight to be pretty until there was nothing left but skin and bones, nothing left to lose but life itself.”

Unstable relationships with friends and her first love toward another girl contribute to Bellows’ sense of despair and isolation along the way. Her sexuality is never directly addressed in the book; her feelings toward female friends are more suggested than described.

The author wonders why the ample women depicted in Renaissance sculptures were admired when today they would be criticized. The book calls attention to society’s definition of beautiful – hence the book’s title – as she realizes in therapy that advertisers and the fashion industry profit from the insecurities most people, especially women, feel.

Bellows’ refreshingly candid memoir is more than a powerful coming-of-age story. The Definition of Beautiful raises important questions about our influencing forces, priorities, and unhealthy coping mechanisms while exploring the extremes our minds can take us to when life overwhelms.

Margie Sylvester is a former teacher and serves on the High Plains Book Awards Board.

Man, Underground by Mark Hummel, a 2024 finalist in both Fiction and Big Sky categories of the High Plains Book Awards, is a story told from the perspective of a man who lives in the cool womb of the earth. The absence of a doorbell along with the omission of windows on the front façade of his shelter signals his want to be left alone, but at the same time send a curious and frightening message to outside observers that he lives in buried darkness.

Unbeknownst to his critics, the south side of his structure is lined with windows bringing in sunlight and views of a lush vegetable garden blossoming in a once barren gravel pit. He buries himself in seclusion and protection as a response to his deep grief until one day a precocious seventeen-year-old Monica Thoreau knocks on his front door forcing him to reluctantly emerge.

She lives her own underground life fighting her own demons with an intent to not adhere to the provincial existence of a normal teenager. Her appearance at the man’s front entrance comes with the determination to help save him from governmental interference. The new occupants encroaching upon his once haven are voicing complaints about his nonconformity to their concept of the ideal neighbor who lives a conventional life. They are seeking ways to remove him from their community with requests to have his property seized. Monica pushes her way into his life to help him fight to keep his sanctuary.

She extracts him from his underground shelter and breaks his well-worn routines and rituals. With her orchestration they embark on mischievous adventures that expose deep vulnerabilities and sentiments for them both. As a result, a friendship develops between the two with banter and deep conversations focusing on emotions that resonate at each of their cores.

Through the underground man and Monika, Hummel perceptively illuminates many of the fears and challenges that stay buried and hidden in these characters. He opens their very souls to reveal the pain and hurt while acknowledging and honoring those frailties and faults. Once exposed and recognized, the chance of resolution and resolve becomes possible.

Throughout, the brightest hope that shines is from the random acts of kindness that the characters share with each other and with unexpected recipients. Their actions soften many of the underground challenges and emotions found in their spirits.

Stella Fong is host to “Flavors Under the Big Sky: Celebrating the Bounty of the Region” on Yellowstone Public Radio, author of “Historic Restaurants of Billings” and “Billings Food,” and a regular contributor to “Yellowstone Valley Woman Magazine.”

Go as a River begins with the end of a girl’s coming-of-age story, then shades into her adult years of regret, reflection, resolve, and achievement. This impressive debut novel, by Colorado author Shelley Read, is a finalist for a High Plains Book Award in the Fiction category.

“Torie” Nash, the narrator and principal character, serves as sole domestic for her male family members who farm their Colorado peach orchard. At seventeen, she finds herself pregnant. At the same time, she learns that her young lover, Wil, has been murdered for the dark tone of his skin.

Alone in the nearby mountains for the last months of her hidden pregnancy, Torie gives birth to a son for whom she hasn’t enough milk to nurse, nor the resources to buy infant formula. In a decision that will follow her for years, she abandons her newborn where she knows he will be found.

Later, when the family orchard has come into her hands, she would, if she could, live her life as Wil had advised: “Go as a river.” But such adages, for all their wisdom, may prove sturdier in their thoughts than in their legs – or oars. The actual river in her life, the Gunnison, is scheduled to be dammed and will drown her hometown along with her orchard.

In response to the crisis, “Torie” grows into the “Victoria” of her given name. Enlisting the savvy of agricultural science, she finds a stunning way to save the orchard.

Here is a novel that will nudge readers to diverse responses in various directions. Some may warm to Victoria’s moments of resolve and achievement. Other readers may engage her recurring self-doubts or maternal regrets. Some few may grow impatient with her uncertainties, while still others will find those uncertainties engaging, familiar, perhaps akin to their own.

For historically minded readers, the novel’s explicit chronology from 1948 to 1971 offers contextual perspectives on compelling major themes including gender, race, family, and community.

Wherever readers’ attentions may turn, Victoria’s voice remains as a varying presence, at times irresolute, at other moments revealing a versatile sense of direction to be admired. In her own words, “I never stopped questioning the choices of my past, but in the known world, each step surely unfurls the next, and we must walk into that open space, mapless and without invitation.”

William Kamowski is Emeritus Professor of English at Montana State University-Billings.

A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power is a High Plains Book Awards finalist in three categories: Fiction, Indigenous Writer, and Woman Writer. In this, her fourth book, Power weaves the story of three Indigenous women from successive generations into a tapestry of a history of genocide, cultural thievery, and oppression. Power uses the ingenious technique of using each woman’s doll as a source of solace and strength and finally, the dolls provide a summative and healing voice. The result is a gripping story with the power of fiction buttressed by facts of history. Each of the first three Parts is devoted to a woman of a different generation: Sissy of the 1960s and current day, Lillian of the 1930s, Cora of the 1900s. A fourth woman appears periodically in visions to these women – a grievously injured woman who is “looking for the way past pain.”Power also deftly characterizes male partners of these women – Sissy’s father and Lillian’s husband Cornelius, a kind and quietly heroic journalist; Jack, a spirited, defiant youth at Carlisle Indian School whose innate loyalty and firm morality is still discernible as a tormented adult husband, father, and grandfather.

This novel’s dedication, “For my ancestors,” affirms its roots in Power’s family history. Her mother’s family grew up across the road from Sitting Bull’s original grave; her grandparents attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. The narrative voice in this book is deeply and movingly authentic. Along the way, we are reminded of – or if we didn’t know, we learn about – people and events on the timeline of Indigenous oppression. The list is long: Oahe Dam, the disappearance of the buffalo, Sitting Bull’s death, the banning of the Ghost Dance, General Sully of the Battle of Whitestone Hill, the campaign to annihilate native languages, and the sundry inhumanities of the Indian boarding schools. Because these events affect the fabric of the lives of the characters in this book, the impact is more powerful than if we read about them in a book of pure history.

Yes, there are tragedies and suffering in this book, but there are also stories of strength, of the power of love, of fascinating personalities, descriptions of Nature’s beauty and nourishment. And the stories are told in Power’s glorious prose. Quotable passages are present throughout. Some of the most memorable are in Part 4, where all three dolls form a “council” to provide healing words that reach into the past and affect the present and the future. As the doll Ethel says, “. . .the picture in my head is a map of the heart that runs past the body – love spilling on the dead as well as the unborn because once it gets going it can catch up to anyone.”

There were moments when I wondered if it was appropriate for a white woman to review a novel by an Indigenous woman. After all, all the blurbs for the novel are from Native writers. But I have cast those misgivings aside. This book is a shining light for Native readers and writers, but it is an important – and an overall heartening experience – for all readers. We all need to know the history in this book. We can all respond to tales of strength, love, family. This is a book for readers who appreciate great writing, great storytelling, universal themes, and the history of a people who have emerged with a strong, proud identity after centuries of oppression. As Power writes, “Mended children carry stronger medicine.”

Lou Mandler is a retired educator who is the author of a memoir, “This Storied Land,” and a biography, “Willard E. Fraser, Montana’s Visionary Mayor.”

Teen angst, exacerbated by COVID lockdown and an intense desire to be thin, lead Calgary highschooler Charlotte Bellows to fall prey to a seductive disease.

The Definition of Beautiful is author Bellows’ account of her near-fatal struggle with anorexia. It is a finalist in both the First Book and Memoir/Creative Nonfiction categories of the High Plains Book Awards.

Even at age nine, weighing 80 pounds, Bellows thought she looked “gross” and felt ashamed of her body. Her descent into a dangerous spiral begins innocently enough when she and her mother attempt dieting together. Understandably, when much of life seems out of her control, she learns she can at least control her weight. By 14, she becomes obsessed with eating sparingly and fanatically counting calories in her quest to lose more and more pounds.

Curiously, once in the grips of this obsession, the author never mentions the numbers on her bathroom scale, but she does describe some physical consequences of severe weight loss. Lacking padding, the skin on her backbone is “bruise puce” from sitting in hard school chairs. All 24 of her ribs are clearly visible and she delights in counting them. Despite being chronically cold and losing chunks of hair, she lies to her parents about her caloric intake and secretly discards food her body desperately needs. Lethargic and weak, she misses muscles she no longer has while literally starving to death.

At night in a dreamlike state, an emaciated figure called Ed frequently appears, luring her along and promising to protect her. His name is an acronym for Eating Disorder, and for a time, he becomes the most significant “person” in her life.

Fearing hospitalization where she would be forced to eat, Bellows contemplates suicide. She writes, “Death is the one thing that is ultimately in my control.” And later, “I scream at society for telling me to lose just a little more weight to be pretty until there was nothing left but skin and bones, nothing left to lose but life itself.”

Unstable relationships with friends and her first love toward another girl contribute to Bellows’ sense of despair and isolation along the way. Her sexuality is never directly addressed in the book; her feelings toward female friends are more suggested than described.

The author wonders why the ample women depicted in Renaissance sculptures were admired when today they would be criticized. The book calls attention to society’s definition of beautiful – hence the book’s title – as she realizes in therapy that advertisers and the fashion industry profit from the insecurities most people, especially women, feel.

Bellows’ refreshingly candid memoir is more than a powerful coming-of-age story. The Definition of Beautiful raises important questions about our influencing forces, priorities, and unhealthy coping mechanisms while exploring the extremes our minds can take us to when life overwhelms.

Margie Sylvester is a former teacher and serves on the High Plains Book Awards Board.

Shirley Steele has spent nearly a century writing poems. “Capturing essence,” she writes in “The Portrait Painter, “to suit myself--/to see myself.” I am grateful for her decades-long dedication to her creative vision. By writing to suit herself, to see herself, Steele has crafted a collection of poetry that offers subtle insights into the human experience. Her debut collection, West of Town, is a finalist for a 2024 High Plains Book Award in both the Poetry and First Book categories.

Many of Steele’s poems laud the simple joys of life. They celebrate swimming in a warm lake at night, relishing rain in late summer, and even falling asleep in a grandmother’s lap. She writes sensitively about Montana landscapes: the “wild sweet pea pods” along fences, cottonwoods brilliant in their autumn colors, and a “faded-curtain sky.” She lets us “float along the landscape.” But even as Steele’s western land nurtures us, it reminds us that all things are transient.

Steele is drawn to the quiet, often overlooked moments of life, particularly a woman’s life: picking up a forgotten glove, talking to a friend about the old days, building a rock wall, and getting ready for an Easter service. Such quotidian moments, she knows, burst with meaning, possibility, and even magic. For a little girl, “new patent leather Mary Janes,” “lace-trimmed anklets,” and a “new-flower crisp dress” are the “finery” that transforms ordinary days into sacred time. Sitting with the other schoolchildren in the church balcony, the speaker imagines the “Holy Spirit/soaring among the vaulted arches.”

Although these poems record intimate moments of life and compel us to look closely at the natural world, the terrible sweep of history is never far from the honeysuckle, the gardenias, and the blue ponds. A young couple stands “before a row of old houses” with their “first child in a carriage.” Their life may be ahead, but the war is “ever behind them.” When a young woman heads off to college in her “plum velvet dress” and her “cousin’s fur jacket,” the same train that takes her to school transports others to the front lines.

In “During the War,” she elevates a pause to look out the window into a powerful elegiac moment. The speaker knows the person who stops at the window sees only the “old maple trees/and a church across the way,” but the yearning she discerns is far more significant. The person who looks is not interested in the view but hopes to see the future. This tiny hesitation suggests the anxiety of the soldier wondering if he may soon die in battle. Because he is “only a memory now,” we can’t help but wonder if this insignificant pause could have been a premonition of his death.

As the wife of Ben Steele, an artist and survivor of the Bataan Death March, the monumental horror of war is never far from her vision. In “Gallery Wars,” the speaker goes to an art museum where she sees the 19th-century Spanish painter Francisco Goya’s famous war prints as well as Ben Steele’s drawings of his own World War II prisoner-of-war experience. The victims, Steele acknowledges, are different, but it is always the “same old war.”

West of Town is a quiet book whose gifts, like many a Montana river, run deep.

Danell Jones's latest book is “The Girl Prince: Virginia Woolf, Race, and the Dreadnought Hoax.”

In Through the Wilderness, photographer and documentary filmmaker Brad Orsted shares the searing story of his own redemption after the mysterious death of his fifteen-month-old daughter at the home of his mother. The memoir is a finalist in the First Book category of the 2024 High Plains Book Awards.

The book begins in the Yellowstone wilderness where Orsted and his family have moved to begin anew after the devastating loss of their young daughter Marley. Brad has spiraled into a numbing world of alcohol and prescription drugs and is desperate to retrieve sanity and hope. In this no-holds-barred account, Orsted writes: “Everywhere I turned and everything I experienced reminded me of losing Marley. I couldn’t escape the pain… Hurting was better than forgetting.” Orsted’s life takes a pivotal turn when he stumbles into a grizzly when walking off a hangover. In spellbinding prose, Orsted gets thrown a lifeline: “That grizzly had sized me up and knew more about me in ten seconds than I knew in a lifetime. I felt lucky to be alive for the first time in two years.”

The story jumps back and forth in time, between Brad’s difficult early upbringing, Marley’s death, and then Brad’s adult journey to forgiveness and sobriety. While the chronology can feel a bit jumbled, the beauty of the book is the way the author shares his hard-learned lessons with inspired vignettes (a Crow sweat lodge ceremony!) and dark humor. “I tried so hard to find some peace with Marley’s death, but it was always an emotional country line dance, one step forward, two steps back. I was coming apart again and had no business even being on the dance floor.” Through a series of fortuitous breaks, Orsted develops his talent as a photographer and documentary filmmaker. Whether tracking a mountain lion family in subzero weather or following two orphaned grizzly cubs, Orsted slowly finds his equilibrium: “The light of the rising moon crept across the meadow, and the night stage seemed to vibrate with me… On that lonely stretch of Montana back road with two orphaned grizzly cubs in the mountain darkness that surrounded us, I promised Marley and my Creator that I would get sober and tell our story if they would stay with me through it.”

This book honors struggle and the many roads offered to us to forgive and find communion with the natural world. It is a gift that reminds us how blessed we are to be so close to wilderness and healing storytellers like Brad Orsted.

Tim Sweeney is a retired LGBTQ and HIV advocate and activist.

A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power is a High Plains Book Awards finalist in three categories: Fiction, Indigenous Writer, and Woman Writer. In this, her fourth book, Power weaves the story of three Indigenous women from successive generations into a tapestry of a history of genocide, cultural thievery, and oppression. Power uses the ingenious technique of using each woman’s doll as a source of solace and strength and finally, the dolls provide a summative and healing voice. The result is a gripping story with the power of fiction buttressed by facts of history. Each of the first three Parts is devoted to a woman of a different generation: Sissy of the 1960s and current day, Lillian of the 1930s, Cora of the 1900s. A fourth woman appears periodically in visions to these women – a grievously injured woman who is “looking for the way past pain.”Power also deftly characterizes male partners of these women – Sissy’s father and Lillian’s husband Cornelius, a kind and quietly heroic journalist; Jack, a spirited, defiant youth at Carlisle Indian School whose innate loyalty and firm morality is still discernible as a tormented adult husband, father, and grandfather.

This novel’s dedication, “For my ancestors,” affirms its roots in Power’s family history. Her mother’s family grew up across the road from Sitting Bull’s original grave; her grandparents attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. The narrative voice in this book is deeply and movingly authentic. Along the way, we are reminded of – or if we didn’t know, we learn about – people and events on the timeline of Indigenous oppression. The list is long: Oahe Dam, the disappearance of the buffalo, Sitting Bull’s death, the banning of the Ghost Dance, General Sully of the Battle of Whitestone Hill, the campaign to annihilate native languages, and the sundry inhumanities of the Indian boarding schools. Because these events affect the fabric of the lives of the characters in this book, the impact is more powerful than if we read about them in a book of pure history.

Yes, there are tragedies and suffering in this book, but there are also stories of strength, of the power of love, of fascinating personalities, descriptions of Nature’s beauty and nourishment. And the stories are told in Power’s glorious prose. Quotable passages are present throughout. Some of the most memorable are in Part 4, where all three dolls form a “council” to provide healing words that reach into the past and affect the present and the future. As the doll Ethel says, “. . .the picture in my head is a map of the heart that runs past the body – love spilling on the dead as well as the unborn because once it gets going it can catch up to anyone.”

There were moments when I wondered if it was appropriate for a white woman to review a novel by an Indigenous woman. After all, all the blurbs for the novel are from Native writers. But I have cast those misgivings aside. This book is a shining light for Native readers and writers, but it is an important – and an overall heartening experience – for all readers. We all need to know the history in this book. We can all respond to tales of strength, love, family. This is a book for readers who appreciate great writing, great storytelling, universal themes, and the history of a people who have emerged with a strong, proud identity after centuries of oppression. As Power writes, “Mended children carry stronger medicine.”

Lou Mandler is a retired educator who is the author of a memoir, “This Storied Land,” and a biography, “Willard E. Fraser, Montana’s Visionary Mayor.”

In this collection of essays, Michelle Good, a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, begins by illustrating the history of interactions between the government of Canada and its Indigenous peoples. Truth Telling is a finalist in the Indigenous Writer category of the 2024 High Plains Book Awards.

Good writes that Europeans viewed the New World primarily in economic terms: this was an oyster ripe for the taking, a new land teeming with natural riches which they wished to exploit. To accomplish that, colonizers needed to subdue the native peoples. They even resorted to inducing starvation to do so. Later, in the 20th century, they forced the removal of children from their families, placing them in residential schools in order to de-indigenize them, to make them “white.” Good characterizes colonization as essentially genocidal, with the colonizers viewing Indigenous cultures as backward and savage. In truth those cultures were highly functional – though completely different from – the cultures of the European colonizers.

Residential schools were poorly funded by the government, and as a result, the children were poorly fed, had poor medical care, and were not really educated. Some were physically and sexually abused. As a result of the deprivations, many died. In the early 2000s, the years of abuse that Indigenous children faced at the hands of religious groups and the government began to come to light. When the depth of the mismanagement was made public, the government realized that it had to act. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was formed to investigate and publicize what happened in those schools.

Michelle Good herself is of mixed race. Her father’s people were English and French; her mother’s, Cree. When her father married her mother, her white grandmother could not forgive him for doing so. Like other Indigenous children, Good was taken from her family and sent to a residential school, where she was mistreated, not educated, and abused. At the school, she contracted tuberculosis and spent three years at a TB hospital. Thereafter, she lived with a number of foster families, often with other foster children in circumstances hardly familial. Eventually, she took courses, qualified in the law and opened her own law practice. She completed an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and published Five Little Indians, a novel, which won a number of national awards in Canada.

For those of us who are unfamiliar with the history of the treatment of Indigenous Peoples, this well-written book gives much to consider.

In the end, Good says that for true reconciliation to occur, Canadians of European extraction need to understand and appreciate the history of Indigenous peoples and their mistreatment from the first foray of Europeans into North America to the present. Canadians need to understand that Indigenous people have their own cultures. They need to appreciate and respect each other. and finally, once the truth is known, the government needs to make restitution by restoring at least some public lands to the tribes.

This is an instructive, though uncomfortable, read. Good’s book gives the reader insight into what Good herself has suffered and what Indigenous people suffered and continue to suffer.

JP Mandler is retired and living in Connecticut.

Bad Cree by Jessica Johns is an engaging and haunting exploration of family, loss, and what happens when the past and present collide. A finalist in the Indigenous Writer category of the 2024 High Plains Book Awards, the book opens with Mackenzie, a young Cree woman who is unnerved when she is caught up in a nightmare – watching as crows surround the body of her sister who died – unable to wake up. “Sabrina’s heart, exposed to the world, beat and beat and beat. The crow finally stopped its pecking to look at me. Its dark eyes reflected the moon above us, another hold in the chest of the world.” Thus opens the novel, which challenges our perceptions of wake and sleep, of what tethers us to this world and to those who have gone.

In impressively creepy, taut prose, Johns explores how Mackenzie faces the death of both her sister and her kokum (grandmother). While her visions become more disturbing and the boundary between the two begins to dissipate, she leaves Vancouver for her home in Alberta, seeking help and advice. Bad Cree a testament to the bonds of family, of Aunties, of sharing knowledge, providing support, and healing.

No spoilers here – but you are going to have a hard time putting this book down. Johns provides a compelling narrative and in vivid prose shares Mackenzie’s journey and transformation. One cannot escape pain or grief and through the eyes of Mackenzie we see this borne out time and time again: “I thought that I could leave the bad behind. But I guess the bad isn’t a thing you can run from, because it’s not a thing that can be held. It doesn’t announce itself, there’s no siren or beacon. Instead, it’s a steady beating, like a heart or a drum. It’s a sound that lives in the body and grows into the ground.”

Jessica Johns is a nehiyaw auntie with English-Irish ancestry and a member of Sucker Creek First Nation in Treaty 8 territory in Northern Alberta. Her short story “Bad Cree,” upon which her novel is based, won the 2020 Writer’s Trust of Canada Journey prize.

Jen Lynn is a professor of history at Montana State University Billings.

In this collection of essays, Michelle Good, a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, begins by illustrating the history of interactions between the government of Canada and its Indigenous peoples. Truth Telling is a finalist in the Indigenous Writer category of the 2024 High Plains Book Awards.

Good writes that Europeans viewed the New World primarily in economic terms: this was an oyster ripe for the taking, a new land teeming with natural riches which they wished to exploit. To accomplish that, colonizers needed to subdue the native peoples. They even resorted to inducing starvation to do so. Later, in the 20th century, they forced the removal of children from their families, placing them in residential schools in order to de-indigenize them, to make them “white.” Good characterizes colonization as essentially genocidal, with the colonizers viewing Indigenous cultures as backward and savage. In truth those cultures were highly functional – though completely different from – the cultures of the European colonizers.

Residential schools were poorly funded by the government, and as a result, the children were poorly fed, had poor medical care, and were not really educated. Some were physically and sexually abused. As a result of the deprivations, many died. In the early 2000s, the years of abuse that Indigenous children faced at the hands of religious groups and the government began to come to light. When the depth of the mismanagement was made public, the government realized that it had to act. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was formed to investigate and publicize what happened in those schools.

Michelle Good herself is of mixed race. Her father’s people were English and French; her mother’s, Cree. When her father married her mother, her white grandmother could not forgive him for doing so. Like other Indigenous children, Good was taken from her family and sent to a residential school, where she was mistreated, not educated, and abused. At the school, she contracted tuberculosis and spent three years at a TB hospital. Thereafter, she lived with a number of foster families, often with other foster children in circumstances hardly familial. Eventually, she took courses, qualified in the law and opened her own law practice. She completed an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and published Five Little Indians, a novel, which won a number of national awards in Canada.

For those of us who are unfamiliar with the history of the treatment of Indigenous Peoples, this well-written book gives much to consider.

In the end, Good says that for true reconciliation to occur, Canadians of European extraction need to understand and appreciate the history of Indigenous peoples and their mistreatment from the first foray of Europeans into North America to the present. Canadians need to understand that Indigenous people have their own cultures. They need to appreciate and respect each other. and finally, once the truth is known, the government needs to make restitution by restoring at least some public lands to the tribes.

This is an instructive, though uncomfortable, read. Good’s book gives the reader insight into what Good herself has suffered and what Indigenous people suffered and continue to suffer.

JP Mandler is retired and living in Connecticut.

The phrase “tenacious beasts” could conjure thoughts of century-old, colonial, and patriarchal writings portraying man against the wild. This choice feels very deliberate by author Christopher Preston, a reclaiming of the phrase back towards and for wildlife. Preston’s Tenacious Beasts, as readers will find out, are the creatures who against all odds have hung on through a brutal, often human-caused century-long (or longer) assault on natural systems, animals, and processes. Tenacious Beasts: Wildlife Recoveries That Change How We Think About Animals is a finalist in the High Plains Book Awards Nonfiction category.

Preston, a professor of environmental philosophy at the University of Montana, deftly weaves cultural history, wildlife and ecology science, philosophy, and storytelling to tell the stories of the people, landscapes, and most importantly, animals, who despite all odds have thrived in an increasingly fragmented and warming world, constantly in contact, and sometimes conflict, with humans. The breadth of knowledge and research Preston collates from Indigenous communities, scientists, conservationists, ranchers, and wildlife agents is impressive, speaking and learning about animals from Dutch and European wolves, to the Marsican brown bear of Italy, to European bison in England’s old-growth forests, whales, otters and more of the Alaskan coast, and our own native bison, wolves, and salmon. Although it is refreshing to read of these remarkable animals, many who have recovered from cataclysmic predation and habitat loss, Preston is careful to not green-wash wildlife recovery, clearly weaving in the ever-present danger of climate change, human intent, and political factors that could again tip the tide against wildlife and wild spaces.

With a pragmatic, sometimes tongue-in-cheek but always sincere, style, Tenacious Beasts is an accessible read for the uninitiated to either wildlife science or philosophy. Throughout the book, Preston raises more questions than answers. But that, perhaps, is the true point of Tenacious Beasts: not to solve climate change, human culture, or political will (good or ill) toward our wild animals or spaces, but instead to extend an invitation. Reading Tenacious Beasts is an opportunity for each of us to be open and receptive to different, traditional, or new ways of thinking, to examine ourselves and our biases and expectations when it comes to coexisting with other life on earth, and ultimately, to view the human species as a part of nature, not a spectator or engineer to it.

And when all else fails, Preston leaves us with one golden piece of advice on coexisting within the natural world: when in doubt, ask yourself WWBD – what would the beaver do?

Carla Nordlund is a writer, editor, and farmer based in Absarokee, MT.

In February 1910, a small group led by two Abyssinian princes boarded the celebrated English warship, the Dreadnought, for a hastily organized tour. The visitors wore their cultural regalia, complete with turbans and richly decorated tunics, and their entourage, or suite, of followers included a German translator who spoke for them as they inspected the ship and met with some of its officers. They departed after forty-five minutes for the local railway station, where they disappeared into a London-bound train. A few days later, newspaper headlines about the visit began to appear, exposing a twist that mortified the Royal Navy. The group, it turned out, were not African princes at all but hoaxers in blackface.

The story became an international sensation, a source of both humor and outrage, inspiring condemnation in Parliament alongside satirical postcards and fictional representations. Even with this notoriety, however, the incident may have been relegated to the footnotes of history if not for one fact: one of the hoaxers was actually author Virginia Woolf, who would go on to achieve fame and artistic success with books including To the Lighthouse and the seminal feminist essay, A Room of One’s Own.

Through the years since, the Dreadnought Hoax has been viewed through differing lenses which have added layers to its interpretation. Woolf herself gave a humorous account of it to a women’s organization many years later, and her co-conspirators also offered their variations on what occurred. When looked at from a larger, societal context, the prank takes on more complex meaning. Was it a group of young British intellectuals tweaking the Royal Navy’s metaphorical nose? An anti-imperialist or pacifist stunt? Or should it be viewed as a culturally insensitive and thoughtlessly bigoted appropriation of Black identity founded in Britain’s casual racism?

Author and Woolf scholar Danell Jones uses the hoax and its aftermath as a framework to examine not only its place in Woolf’s early biography and her social opinions, but also the fallout of European colonization of Africa, and the racism endemic to British culture which was shaped through derogatory images of Black people and enforced through stereotypical language and popular minstrel show performances. As counterpoints, Jones introduces the reader to several Black figures who lived parallel lives to Woolf, sometimes as close as a few doors away from her Bloomsbury home, including authors, artists, students, and politicians.

The result is an intricate portrait of British society at the turn of the century, its history and attitudes, rendered in Jones’ accessible, entertaining prose – and now a finalist in two categories of the High Plains Book Awards: Nonfiction and Big Sky. Much that was commonplace in 1910 is shocking to a modern reader, but we must acknowledge that, even though one hundred and fourteen years have passed since those “Abyssinian princes” stepped onto the decks of the Dreadnought, we have not entirely escaped the social inequalities represented by their blackface. The story, whether viewed as a simple hoax or an indictment of racial bigotry, continues to resonate today.

Barb Riebe is a librarian at Billings Public Library, where she can be found at the Reference desk or managing the staff review blog, The Readers’ Corner. She lives in Billings with a husband and two cats.

Shirley Steele has spent nearly a century writing poems. “Capturing essence,” she writes in “The Portrait Painter, “to suit myself--/to see myself.” I am grateful for her decades-long dedication to her creative vision. By writing to suit herself, to see herself, Steele has crafted a collection of poetry that offers subtle insights into the human experience. Her debut collection, West of Town, is a finalist for a 2024 High Plains Book Award in both the Poetry and First Book categories.

Many of Steele’s poems laud the simple joys of life. They celebrate swimming in a warm lake at night, relishing rain in late summer, and even falling asleep in a grandmother’s lap. She writes sensitively about Montana landscapes: the “wild sweet pea pods” along fences, cottonwoods brilliant in their autumn colors, and a “faded-curtain sky.” She lets us “float along the landscape.” But even as Steele’s western land nurtures us, it reminds us that all things are transient.

Steele is drawn to the quiet, often overlooked moments of life, particularly a woman’s life: picking up a forgotten glove, talking to a friend about the old days, building a rock wall, and getting ready for an Easter service. Such quotidian moments, she knows, burst with meaning, possibility, and even magic. For a little girl, “new patent leather Mary Janes,” “lace-trimmed anklets,” and a “new-flower crisp dress” are the “finery” that transforms ordinary days into sacred time. Sitting with the other schoolchildren in the church balcony, the speaker imagines the “Holy Spirit/soaring among the vaulted arches.”

Although these poems record intimate moments of life and compel us to look closely at the natural world, the terrible sweep of history is never far from the honeysuckle, the gardenias, and the blue ponds. A young couple stands “before a row of old houses” with their “first child in a carriage.” Their life may be ahead, but the war is “ever behind them.” When a young woman heads off to college in her “plum velvet dress” and her “cousin’s fur jacket,” the same train that takes her to school transports others to the front lines.

In “During the War,” she elevates a pause to look out the window into a powerful elegiac moment. The speaker knows the person who stops at the window sees only the “old maple trees/and a church across the way,” but the yearning she discerns is far more significant. The person who looks is not interested in the view but hopes to see the future. This tiny hesitation suggests the anxiety of the soldier wondering if he may soon die in battle. Because he is “only a memory now,” we can’t help but wonder if this insignificant pause could have been a premonition of his death.

As the wife of Ben Steele, an artist and survivor of the Bataan Death March, the monumental horror of war is never far from her vision. In “Gallery Wars,” the speaker goes to an art museum where she sees the 19th-century Spanish painter Francisco Goya’s famous war prints as well as Ben Steele’s drawings of his own World War II prisoner-of-war experience. The victims, Steele acknowledges, are different, but it is always the “same old war.”

West of Town is a quiet book whose gifts, like many a Montana river, run deep.

Danell Jones's latest book is “The Girl Prince: Virginia Woolf, Race, and the Dreadnought Hoax.”

Poetry as a genre confounds many people, but just as fiction has many forms, so does poetry. From meditations on nature to confessional verse to narrative epics, there really is something for everyone, and ekphrastic poems often are especially resonant, given our naturally visual inclinations. In these poems, the poet is responding directly to a specific piece of art. Readers wishing to explore this further should try The Currency of His Light by Roy Beckemeyer, a finalist in the Poetry category of the 2024 High Plains Book Awards.

As the title suggests, light is the collection’s central theme, illuminating beloved faces, casting shadows, reaching through time from distant galaxies. Across seven sections, each with its own light-related epigraph, Beckemeyer covers an array of subjects, from personal reflections on the pandemic to meditations on Venus. Fittingly, since light is crucial for visual artists, ekphrastic poems are scattered throughout, many of which include reproductions of the paintings to which they refer, including works by Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, and Caravaggio.

Balancing the ethereal nature of light, Beckemeyer grounds his work with tangible references not only to contemporary popular culture but also to the natural world. For instance, together with references to The Lego Movie and Back to the Future, a broad cast of secondary animal characters (lynx, Arctic terns, scallops) help add texture while also providing a reminder that light enables our species’ primary way of sensing the world. Additionally, many of the poems are responses to the work of others (Barbara Hamby, Li Po, Wallace Stevens), making one of the collection’s through-lines a kind of conversation about the importance of light.

Beckemeyer uses alliteration liberally (pollen arranges itself in “pointillist plumes” and “shivering” leaves are “shimmering”), which emphasizes his imagery but is not something that will resonate for every reader. Additionally, the occasional editing error – every author’s bugaboo – crept into the final manuscript. The title of a Li Po poem, “Drinking Alone in Moonlight,” is truncated, the “alone” left out, for example, and a misspelling of “chaff” as “chuff” remains uncorrected in a later poem. However, most poetry readers, especially those who are drawn to ekphrastic work, will likely forgive those transgressions when they encounter phrases like “the nonlinear mathematics of flesh” and “stampeding stallions raise haboobs to stun the desert’s sun.” In the meantime, we can all be grateful that, because of the currency of light, poets are able to create work, and we in turn are able to read it.

Julie Schultz is the head buyer for This House of Books, the bookstore co-op in downtown Billings, and also serves on the board of directors for the High Plains Book Awards as well as that of the Montana Bookstore Trail.

The acclaimed prose-writer and editor, Allen Morris Jones, makes his poetic debut in Mumblecusser and Other Poems, a 2024 Poetry finalist for the High Plains Book Awards. He writes in his afterward that these poems are “exercises in self-pity and self-absorption,” and they are, in every way, singular (à la Derrida), but they are also poems about a place.

Jones is a home-town poet. A local. A Montanan.

He is at once the hunter in a tree-stand (“On a Tree-Stand in Montana”), as well as the father waiting to pick up his son from school, listening to none other than NPR (“Yesterday Afternoon, 3:35”). In many places this contradiction would make less sense, but here under the big sky, Jones is Jones.

Mumblecusser is a diary, spanning roughly 20 actual years. Each poem is timestamped, a marker from a specific time in Jones’s life. Of course, nature is there as well as his childhood through fatherhood, but mostly it’s a collection against epiphany and toward mortality.

Near half of the poems center on aging or death, leaving the rest of the poems for meaning and everyday living. In “The River,” he combines both while exposing the limits of ownership. The narrator buys the river from a boy “who sells/anything you might need” and treats it like a pet, hoping, if he spends long enough, he might crack the river’s language and come to some sort of metaphysical understanding. But he won’t, and like Norman Maclean (A River Runs Through It), he too will be haunted by waters, and eventually he will have to let the river go.

No matter how hard he tries, Jones’s poems are constricted by the material – the river, his memory, his son – and the limits of observation. He can go no deeper. There is no underbelly for him. However, it is within these limits, when he moves out of the way and simply becomes the instrument of observation that he edges toward the sublime like in “The Marmot.” Jones writes:

“snatched up/by the quick/shadow of wings,/trapped within/twin cages of/claws, pierced by/brown needles,/in that final moment/of bloody squeal/and struggle—/Oh man, oh man,/I’m flying.”

And again, in “Twenty-eight below at 8:00 AM,” perhaps his most timely poem, he writes:

“The richest men in the world do not/have this: a warm kitchen after cold work,/the honest regard of another,/hay enough to feed out through the winter,/probably; a hand on a shoulder and this coffee,/warm enough./They might have everything/else, those men, but they don’t have this./This is ours.”

His free verse is direct and accessible, and his poetic tastes are his own, stating in his afterward, “I like what I like.” Even so, Jones’s poetry clearly connects to others as evidenced by being a f*cking finalist! A sentiment, I’m sure, he would appreciate.

“Mumblecusser” is his title poem after all.

Austin Grant Bennett directs the MSUB Honors Program and teaches writing at MSUB City College.

With the intriguing title Shoot the Horses First, Leah Angstman immediately places the reader into the midst of a variety of historical stories and short narratives with the rare expertise of a seasoned writer. Her book is a finalist in the Short Stories category of the 2024 High Plains Book Awards.

Angstman’s description of herself as a researcher (who is also an executive editor living in Colorado) is enticingly evident. Many of the short stories are steeped in scientific and historical detail and nuanced in such a way that one realizes as much as things have changed from previous centuries, much has remained the same. There are lessons yet to be learned and this book’s ability to engage the reader helps deliver those lessons of hardship and optimism, oppression and victory, kindness and betrayal by using narratives of mistaken identity, prejudice, scarlet fever and trains of orphan children to name but a few examples.

Among the sixteen stories are stunning pencil etchings in which we don’t quite see any horse in its entirety. Tantalizing! One of the longer stories in this collection, “Casting Grand Titans,” presents the viewpoint of a female botanist reluctantly offered a teaching position at the University of Iowa where she must teach sewing if she wants to also be allowed to teach botany. The challenge to advocate for oneself in a world where one is stripped of that right is a continual theme in this collection. Further to the point, the right to choose for oneself is a hard-won moment in many lives and is illustrated in this story as the female botany professor is confronted with obstacles ever present in any life, past and present. The beauty of this book is the thread of exacting research running through each story which is further documented with pages of historical notes at the end of the book.

Using the device of flash-point entry, each story offers the reader the sensation of being a time traveler in which one is dropped into the story as it is unfolding. What do we bring to the story from our present lives and what from today would remain true as we experience life in these stories steeped in the history of the USA in the1700s, 1800s and early 1900s? Can it be that kindness reigns over hardship each time and if so, can it be written in such a way that the story isn’t weighed down by overly wrought sentiment or the pulling of heart strings? Well, yes, when stories such as these are written by someone like Angstman, themes of humanity can lift and accelerate all the while never losing the test of authenticity. All this while we live in a world where shooting horses first is often not contested, Shoot the Horses First shares with us the journey involved when we advocate for justice, equality and grace. This book is a keeper on my shelf.

Sherry O’Keefe, author of “Cracking Geodes Open” and five other books, comes from a storytelling Irish family who has made Montana their home since the late 1850s.

The short story collection This Is Salvaged by Vauhini Vara covers familiar terrain, but does so in unusual and often engrossing treatments. If women are victimized, as they often are in contemporary fiction, by social structures, family tragedy, and physiology, Vara’s female characters don’t accept their subordinate status in the usual ways.

In the collection’s first story, “The Irates,” two teenagers vie to earn the job of telephone sex worker. A disaffected alcoholic who has lost her job and her husband emulates a bison in “I, Buffalo.” Other stories star mothers who fail to immediately love their newborns and daughters who fail to respect their parents. Females deal with perimenopause, ex-husbands, prejudice, death, and demented elders.

In the title story, the only one from a male perspective, a childlike woman rejects her boyfriend’s performance art with consummate and spiritual disdain. Marlon, the artist, has been building an ark, using biblical specifications, but, when something goes wrong, he revels in the project’s failure. His devout girlfriend finds his reaction cold and irreligious: “Glenda regarded him with an expression that made him feel as if only he were in hell and not her, as if she were looking down on him from a place of safety and grace, both pitying him and feeling glad to not be down there with him.”

Vara’s attention to the graphic details of illnesses, bodily functions, and mental health crises reliably yanks the stories back whenever they threaten to become sentimental. For example, in the story “The Eighteen Girls,” a reaction to a cancer diagnosis pulls no punches: “Her sister got cancer. The twelfth girl didn’t want to visit her sister at the hospital. Instead, she organized a cancer fundraiser.” Later, when the sick child is back home, life with a terminal illness follows the rituals and idols of a religious practice: “The [bedside] table resembled the religious altars their parents’ religious friends set up for their gods, only instead of little brass bowls of colored powders, here was Percocet, Dilaudid, Ativan.”

Throughout This Is Salvaged, the narration is honest, the sentences and paragraphs beautifully timed, and the use of imagery and metaphor deft. Consider this scene as a woman realizes that her daughter is a person with agency and a bit of genius:

Mayuri presses her foot on the pedal and leans forward … . Then she pounces, nearly standing on the pedals, and pounces again, filling the room with a strange, discordant mess of noise—not the sound of a girl playing a piano at all, but the sound of a piano coming to life and crunching through the streets on its paws, stepping on pets and children, thrusting itself into traffic, looking to exact revenge on everyone who has laid hands on it.

As with most collections, readers may not enjoy every story equally. But Vara’s This Is Salvaged pleases throughout with its artistry.

Cara Chamberlain is a writer and copyeditor. She lives in Billings, MT.

Men Behaving Badly, fictional short stories by Tim O’Leary – a finalist in the High Plains Book Awards Short Stories category – is composed of 13 stories with characters who certainly live up to the book’s title. Each story takes us into the lives of one complicated man to the next – and the poor souls who have to deal with them. There might be many men behaving badly in this twisted compilation, but this book is about much more than behaviors – it’s full of prescient social commentary on American society today. It tackles con artists, celebrities, racists, millennials lacking work ethic, corrupt politicians, closeted homosexuals, cynical political extremists, political discord and several issues plaguing Montana, including “woke” teenagers and billionaires buying land.

Is it just O’Leary or have we all lost our minds? That’s the question to ponder with each clever, absurd, often hilarious, usually shocking tale. Nothing is off-limits here.

The first story, “Made Men,” is a must-read for all Montana snowbirds, especially if you’re a Costco member. “Raging” is a sci-fi thriller that doesn’t seem too far off. “Annemarie” is a disturbing take on a stalker, reminiscent of John Fowles’ “The Collector” that captures the dangers of delusion and obsession.

And then there’s stories like “A Very Brady Funeral” and “The Impersonator” that take a stab at modern-day celebrity and the desperation involved with it. Which Brady is dead? And how do they die? (I don’t want to give it away, but I will say they were literally fighting to remain relevant).

Perhaps my favorite story is “The 100-Year-Old Sheriff,” about an unsuspecting senior at Rimrock Retirement Village who takes matters into his own hands. It’s humorous, but also addresses just how much we’ve devolved since “The Greatest Generation.” The story is farcical yet Cormac McCarthy-inspired, and keeps getting better as it goes along. The narration is the best part: “When you can’t see or hear very well – or even keep a clear thought – it’s easy to imagine all kinds of nefariousness.”

O’Leary, a Billings native, doesn’t hold back on “Raping the Goddess,” where he addresses wealthy out-of-staters coming in and abusing a Treasure State aquifer, not leaving enough water for their neighbors. Irrigators will particularly enjoy the karma involved in this tale.

There are many familiar Big Sky State locations in Men Behaving Badly. O’Leary often returns to his Magic City hometown, most notably in “Reunion,” where Gil returns to Billings for a kegger on the rims to celebrate the class of 1981. Gil is afraid to return, ashamed of something in his past. The revelation is bone-chilling.

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One of O’Leary’s best traits is how directly he addresses our nation’s political discourse, and how horrifying it is as it escalates. “What are the Odds?” captures the polarizing state of our culture, and how it’s affecting the youth, whether it be a numbness to violence or a toxic obsession with generating responses on social media.

Men Behaving Badly is much more than reading about a bunch of assholes. It’s an excellent book, one that’s realized – and important. Plus it will make you laugh.

Charlie Denison is a freelance writer, musician and newspaper editor who lives in Absarokee with his wife.

When many of us of a certain age hear the term “current events,” we have a Proustian flashback to the soft, newsprint pages of the Weekly Reader that appeared once a week with grade-level-appropriate stories about the Space Shuttle, the latest presidential election, or the turmoil in Noriega’s Panama. Not everyone relished the small periodical’s arrival, though, and for some, comic books would probably have been a better medium for imparting information. In this vein, Bozeman, Montana, author Scott Bischke has recognized the value of fiction for engaging young minds with challenging themes, and he has fused his scientific background with his writing chops to create The Critter Chronicles. The first in the series, Fish Tank: A Fable for Our Times, tackled the tepid policy response to climate change. The second, Bat Cave: A Fable of Epidemic Proportions, addresses pandemics and xenophobia and is a finalist for the 2024 Young Adult High Plains Book Award.

The Critter Chronicles are linked, and while each can be read as a standalone, readers will get the most out of the story if they read them in order. For instance, Bat Cave begins when two friends – a bald eagle named Volant and a seagull named Gabby – endeavor to help Jessie, a sea turtle who is key to the first book Fish Tank, return to warmer waters. This allows the narrative to focus on migration on many levels, as the trio’s journey introduces them to the bat migration centered on Baja California. Mirroring the contemporary COVID-19 pandemic, the bat community in the book is facing White-nose Syndrome, and the bats resident year-round object to sharing their cave with the migratory bats. For science-minded readers, the afterword provides more details about some of the topics touched on in the narrative, including a detailed description of the various types of bats who swoop through the story.

Some repetition mars the narrative. The two main characters are referred to as “Volant the eagle and Gabby the seagull” in nearly every chapter, even though we are unlikely to have forgotten their species after our introduction to them on page one. However, the dialogue is pithy and moves the story forward believably, so it is easy to slide over the repetitive description of the central figures. In fact, some young readers, reluctant readers in particular, might even find the repetition calming.

Although Bat Cave is a Young Adult finalist, the story is likely to appeal more to younger readers who are just graduating from chapter books. With their nonhuman protagonists, fables allow enough distance from the story to put the audience at ease, and, in this case, the focus on animals makes the story immediately appealing to early middle-grade readers, an age group that is endlessly fascinated by the natural world. The adults in their lives might feel the urge to over-explain the underlying allegories, but hopefully they restrain themselves and let the story speak for itself. As long as they have access to books, young people will always be able to figure things out for themselves (even without Weekly Reader).

Julie Schultz is the head buyer for This House of Books, the bookstore co-op in downtown Billings, and also serves on the board of directors for the High Plains Book Awards as well as that of the Montana Bookstore Trail.

As a species, humans have been telling stories for millennia, although the medium has shifted over time, with oral tradition and cave art ceding ground as printing technologies evolved and film and television entered the field. The relatively recent development of graphic novels as a robust sub-genre is both a new chapter and a harkening back to what this author imagines as the original storytellers standing in front of rapt audiences with firelight rippling the scenes inscribed on the rock walls behind them. The combination of written words and visual images inherent in the graphic novel form imprints subtle details, making the genre a powerful storytelling vehicle. It is no surprise then, that one of the finalists in the Young Adult category of this year’s High Plains Book Awards, As I Enfold You in Petals, is an evocative example of the form.

This second volume of the Spirit of Denendeh series created and written by Richard Van Camp follows loosely from the first volume, Blanket of Butterflies, which was a Young Adult finalist in 2016. Although it can easily be read as a standalone, this latest installment includes some characters from the first story, most notably Benny, the thuggish strongman who controls Fort Smith in Canada’s Northwest Territories. As I Enfold You in Petals traces newly sober Curtis as he seeks to learn and tap into the traditional cultural practices of his grandfather to heal his community and reverse the ills created by violence and addiction. Benny’s somewhat reluctant help, prompted by his wife, allows Van Camp to explore themes not only of healing but also of redemption and hope. As with all of Van Camp’s work, who is Tlicho Dene, the culture of Canada’s Inuit, Métis, and First Nations people is central to the story, which Scott B. Henderson’s illustrations ably highlight.

While the story is compelling, one of the most interesting parts of the book is the back matter, especially for those who are not regular readers of graphic novels. Not only is there cultural commentary on the use of traditional Inuit tattoos in the illustrations, there is also a discussion of how graphic novels are created. This includes a description of the importance of both the colorist and the letterer in setting the mood and building tension. The details in the back matter help illuminate that, while graphic novels deserve equal consideration with works that do not include illustrations, they also play an important role as gateways to literature. Full-color volumes like As I Enfold You in Petals are especially enticing to reluctant readers, offering a way to introduce young people to the power of stories with visuals that offer context clues to the written words that often cause frustration in non-illustrated formats. Whether you are a graphic novel aficionado or someone new to the genre, As I Enfold You in Petals is worth exploring.

Julie Schultz is the head buyer for This House of Books, the bookstore co-op in downtown Billings, and also serves on the board of directors for the High Plains Book Awards as well as that of the Montana Bookstore Trail.

A Twist in Time, written by Janet Muirhead Hill, a seasoned Montana author of 16 other Young Adult books, is a finalist in the Young Adult category of this year’s High Plains Book Awards.

Two 13-year-old girls, Madison Clark and Emily Sorenson, were both born on July 17 – one hundred years apart. Through a magical and unexpected happening in 2019 at the Lewis and Clark Caverns, the girls completely switch places. Madison, the daughter of a wealthy New York attorney, is thrust from her lavish 1919 world to the 2019 Montana locale of Emily, one of nine children from a struggling ranch family. The disoriented girls each struggle to adapt to the “new” century in which they find themselves.

With Emily now living in 1919 and Madison in 2019, Hill skillfully weaves historical facts throughout the everyday experiences of the girls. The flu epidemic of 1919 and the COVID-19 epidemic of 2019 provide an intriguing contrast. Montana readers will enjoy encountering recognizable town names; those familiar with New York will appreciate facts about that state.

The juxtaposition of the two time periods is informative, down to the inclusion of even mundane routines such as the weekly bath where siblings shared one tub of water compared to a daily shower in the extravagant New York spacious living quarters. School rules are another area highlighting dramatic disparities.

The lifestyles of the girls illustrate cultural differences and insights of which both girls become aware. Thoughtful character development throughout the book even realistically adds grandmothers to the story. The author deftly shows the value of being true to oneself, of real honesty being the best gift one can give oneself.

A Twist in Time reaches a satisfying conclusion as each girl realizes the importance of appreciating what she has during the time that she has it. A few minor editing errors in the book are not too distracting. Thought provoking discussion questions are provided at the end of the book.

Joyce Christensen taught in elementary and junior high schools for 36 years.