Montana 1948

by Larry Watson

“From the summer of my twelfth year I carry a series of images more vivid and lasting than any others of my boyhood and indelible beyond all attempts the years make to erase or fade them… “ So begins David Hayden’s story of what happened in Montana in 1948. The events of that cataclysmic summer permanently alter twelve-year-old David’s understanding of his his father, a small-town sheriff; his remarkably strong mother; David’s uncle Frank, a war hero and respected doctor; and the Haydens’ Sioux housekeeper, Marie Little Soldier, whose revelations turn the family’s life upside down as she relates how Frank has been molesting his female Indian patients. As their story unravels around David, he learns that truth is not what one believes it to be, that power is abused, and that sometimes one has to choose between family loyalty and justice.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Westerns, Book Club, Coming Of Age, School, Classics

194 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Larry Watson was born in 1947 in Rugby, North Dakota. He grew up in Bismarck, North Dakota, and was educated in its public schools. Larry married his high school sweetheart, Susan Gibbons, in 1967. He received his BA and MA from the University of North Dakota, his Ph.D. from the creative writing program at the University of Utah, and an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Ripon College. Watson has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1987, 2004) and the Wisconsin Arts Board.

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Milkweed Editions

Rating: 5* of five Another one I'd give six stars to if I could.

The Publisher Says: The events of that small-town summer forever alter David Hayden's view of his family: his self-effacing father, a sheriff who never wears his badge; his clear sighted mother; his uncle, a charming war hero and respected doctor; and the Hayden's lively, statuesque Sioux housekeeper, Marie Little Soldier, whose revelations are at the heart of the story. It is a tale of love and courage, of power abused, and of the terrible choice between family loyalty and justice.

My Review: The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten reviews. Today's prompt is to identify the novel you most like to give to friends.

This book has a deeply personal connection to me and my life. I've mentioned elsewhere that I have given many copies of this book away, and why. I was given heart, comfort, and guidance by this work of fiction, such as no corporeal person could have given me.

But to consider this as a book, a novel written for an audience by a writer, is to appreciate anew the benefits of craftsmanship and the ungovernable lightning of talent. There are very few books I can give the accolade of "I wouldn't change a single thing" to, and this is one of them. Not one word out of place, not one simile or metaphor ill-used, unused, or overused, nothing could be added without compromising the beauty of the book, and nothing need be removed to clear aside clutter.

If brevity is the soul of wit, it is also the soul of wisdom, and this book is wise, so wise, to its child narrator's painful coming to adulthood. It's also wise to the nature of love as lived from day to day, and how it so often can curdle into acceptance of what one cannot change...but should, or should always strive to, because some things are simply, inarguably, Right.

As a meditation on one's remembered past, this is a crystal clear and unsparing récit; as a story, it's so simple as to be mindless, except that it's mindful of the role of unadorned narrative in making the world a better place.

I would like to know the characters in this novel, really know them, sit in their kitchens and listen to their stories and drink their vile percolated coffee. I loved each of them, yes even the one whose bad deeds set the story in motion, loved them for being real and nuanced and far more vulnerable than most of the real people I know.

I can't simply and blindly recommend this book to you, because it's very strong meat; I can encourage you to read it if you care for justice, the horrible cost of it and the terrifying price it exacts from those it visits; but you will come away from it changed, as I was, possibly for the better but changed. Don't ever ask questions you don't want the answers to...and this book answers some very, very nasty questions with grace and beauty and forgiveness.

[Annet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully told story, great writer. A family of a sheriff in a small Montana town, whose brother it turns out, harasses Sioux women, is at the centre of the story. When he arrests his brother, tension increases in the town and his own father turns on him. What to do....The story is told through the eyes of his young son David. The book is concise, but the story is told in a great way, not a word too much, but you can feel the tension and emotion. Yeah, great writer.

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the summer of my twelfth year I carry a series of images more vivid and lasting than any others of my boyhood and indelible beyond all attempts the years make to erase or fade them ….

A young Sioux woman lies on a bed in our house. She is feverish, delirious, and coughing so hard I am afraid she will die.

My father kneels on the kitchen floor, begging my mother to help him. It’s a summer night and the room is brightly lit. Insects cluster around the light fixtures, and the pleading quality in my father’s voice reminds me of those insects – high-pitched, insistent, frantic. It is a sound I have never heard coming from him.

My mother stands in our kitchen on a hot, windy day. The windows are open, and Mother’s lace curtains blow into the room. Mother holds my father’s Ithaca twelve-gauge shotgun, and since she is a small, slender woman, she has trouble finding the balance point of its heavy length. Nevertheless, she has watched my father and other men often enough to know where the shells go, and she loads them until the gun will hold no more. Loading the gun is the difficult part. Once the shells are in, any fool can figure out how to fire it. Which she intends to do.

There are others – the sound of breaking glass, the odor of rotting vegetables …. I offer these images in the order in which they occurred, yet the events that produced these sights and sounds are so rapid and tumbled together that any chronological sequence seems wrong.

The above is not a spoiler since it is the first thing written on the first page of Larry Watson’s novel, one that has been characterized as a literary page-turner. Those are fairly rare, perhaps almost as rare as literary westerns. Well, how about a literary page-turner set in the West? Now, that is virgin territory. But as the title tells us, this is not a historical western. So, readers that do not enjoy westerns need not shy away from it.

I read this soon after it was published in 1993. It is true that one can’t judge a book by its title or its cover, and I didn’t do that. No, I judged it by both its title and its cover (an oil painting of the Yellowstone valley). Only when I began reading did I discover that it was a coming of age story. For me, that was an added bonus.

At some point I read it a second time and then recently I gave it a third reading. Now, I do read quite a lot of books twice, but it really has to resonate with me if I turn to it a third time.

The narrator is middle-aged David Hayden looking back to the summer of 1948 when he was twelve years old. It was a summer of lost innocence. It was a summer in which he learned that truth is not always what we believe and that power can be abused, but those are not the hardest lessons he learned. Because of a scandal, a murder, and a suicide, he also learned that doing the right thing isn’t always easy, but it is especially hard when the choice lies between family loyalty on one hand and justice on the other.

The book expertly evokes a time and a place in prose that has been variously described as ‘understated,’ ‘precise,’ ‘clear,’ ‘crisp,’ and/or ‘restrained.’ I would accept those, but would add elegant.

“Part family memoir, part psychological drama, part historical adventure tale, part elegy to a place and a lost way of life ….”
-- David Huddle, 1993 National Fiction Prize Judge

[David Putnam · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all time favorite books that I have read over and over again. Set in 1948 in a kids point of view, excellent read. This one is up there with Thieves of the City by David Benioff and The River by Peter Heller.
David Putnam author of the Bruno Johnson series.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I pulled this one off my shelf thinking I needed a shorter book that I could read in a day or two, and ended up finishing in three hours. It is a riveting tale of right and wrong and justice, complicated when the sheriff finds that his brother is implicated in some pretty bad dealings with Native American girls. Racism is very much a part of this novel as well, because justice for white men is very different depending on the color of the victim's skin. 169 pages of a story hard to put down until the end, and leaving no winners in the end at all, neither white nor redskinned.

[Zoeytron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Montana 1948 by Larry Watson. This is how it should be done. Clean simple writing and a good story well-told. There is no reason to pump up the volume simply for the sake of marketing a thicker book.

What it means to be a peace officer in Montana is 'knowing when to look and when to look away'. In a time tainted by underlying and sometimes overt racism, this tale is of the struggle between the ties that bind a family together and the moral code that begs for justice to be served.

Excellent work. What this book has to say will linger with you. This is the second book I have read by this author, with the first being won in a Goodreads giveaway (Let Him Go). Discovering author Larry Watson is a bonus. Highly recommended.

[CoachJim · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book a 12-year-old boy tells a story of racism, justice and the tragedy of a family when a deep, dark secret is exposed.

The book is a short, well-written and an easy read. The pace of the story made it difficult to put down, especially as the drama increased near the end. Having been critical of endings in some reviews, I must say I liked the ending in this one.

A highlight of the book was the narrator’s story at the end when, as an adult, he became a history teacher. His musings on history were interesting and included that he did not “believe in the purity and certainty of the study of history”. That he found “history endlessly amusing” because he knew that “the record of any human community might omit stories of sexual abuse, murder, suicide” and any of the most dramatic and “sensational stories were not played out in the public view.” The paragraph that contains these musings ends with the comment:

These musings, of course, are for my private enjoyment. For my students I keep a straight face and pretend that the text tells the truth, whole and unembellished.

This is an author I will be reading again.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is little better than a well-done coming-of-age story, and Montana 1948 is absolutely that. David Hayden is twelve years old and at the center of life-altering events that shake his world and his understanding of what family means, what justice is, and the difference between what is right and what is expected.

David’s father is the town sheriff, a job he inherited (wanted or not) from his own father, a powerful man in the town of Bentrock. Bentrock is located near an Indian reservation, and Indians make up a portion of the town population. One of those Indians is Marie Little Soldier, the Hayden’s housekeeper, and someone whom David loves as if a member of his family. Marie is at the center of the tragedy that overtakes the Haydens and marks the end of David’s childhood.

As the story unfolds, David learns about the difference between justice for the white population and justice for the Indians. He experiences the prejudice against these people in a different way than he has before, and what happens directly involves both David and his family, particularly his father, who must choose between what is right and what is expedient.

I read this book in one sitting, because I had no desire to lay it aside, even to fix lunch for my poor husband, who waited patiently to be fed. Larry Watson writes in a very straightforward manner, but in a way that conjures up place and time and feels real and urgent.

That night I thought I felt death in our house. Grandmother Hayden, a superstitious person, once told me about how, when she was a girl, her brother died and for days after, death lingered in the house. Her brother was trampled by a team of horses, and his blood-and-dirt streaked body was laid on the kitchen table. From then until he was buried my grandmother said she could tell there was another presence in the house. It was nothing she could see, she said, but every time you entered a room it felt as though someone brushed by you as you went in. Every door seemed to require a bit more effort to open and close. There always seemed to be a sound--a whisper--on the edge of your hearing, something you couldn’t quite make out.

There is a haunting feeling to this novel. Perhaps it is the ghosts of people, or perhaps just the ghost of the past, David’s past. A story that insists on being told.

My thanks for my friend, Howard, for pointing me to another obscure masterpiece.

[Laysee · Rating 4 out of 5]

My heart was still in Montana when I finished reading Ivan Doig’s This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind. I wanted to tarry there a while, so I picked up Montana 1948 to remain ensconced in a land of endless sky where the winds blow endlessly, and folks rise to the challenge of surviving the brutal climes. I did not expect to find myself swept up in a different kind of storm, this one on the domestic front. It brought irreversible damage to a prominent family and changed the life of an adolescent boy.

The setting is Bentrock, a farm and ranch country in the far northeast corner of Montana with an Indian reservation on the Western edge. The novel opened with an intriguing and arresting prologue. Its middle-aged narrator, David Hayden, gives a retrospective account of the summer of 1948 when he was 12. In his memory, a Sioux woman laid on a bed in his house; his mother had a gun intending to shoot; his Sheriff father was on his knees begging his mother for help.

The story unfolded bit by bit in a suspenseful manner that kept me riveted. In the Haydens’ employ is Marie Little Soldier, a Sioux Indian housekeeper whom David loved dearly. Her fate is bound up in the indiscretions of a Hayden family member. The young David perceives the aristocratic respect accorded to his family on account of his father (Wes) and his grandfather who both represent the letter of the law, in their respective present and past position as the county sheriff. David’s paternal uncle, Frank, is a doctor once celebrated as a WWII hero and model citizen. However, a family secret surrounding Frank becomes known when Marie is taken ill and he is summoned to provide medical attention. A crime takes place that throws Wes into a quandary of how to be loyal to both justice and family. I put myself in Wes’ shoes and wondered how I would have navigated his ethical dilemma. That itself made for compelling reading.

To me, Watson’s accomplishment is the credible voice of his young narrator. David’s curiosity had him eavesdropping on conversations and piecing together evidence on the perpetrator of the crime that took place at home. He is never portrayed as older than he really is; his artless childlike behaviors were perfectly understandable and even endearing. One episode had him hiding upstairs in his room as difficult confrontations among the adults were swirling downstairs. I could not help laughing when he admitted that much as he wanted to stay in his room, there was an irresistible chocolate cake waiting for him in the kitchen. In the loss he encountered and anticipation of more to come as his family began to disintegrate, he was honest enough to confess that what broke his heart most of all was knowing he would never again ride his horse on his grandparents’ ranch. That felt real. Yet, it was astonishing how insightful a 12-year-old can be. David learned how quickly ’power, wealth, and the rule of law’ can become ‘perversion, scandal, family division, and decay.’ In his words, ‘I realized that these strange, unthought-of connections- sex and death, lust and violence, desire and degradation - are there, there, deep in even a good heart’s chambers.’ This observation, too, was remarkable.

Montana 1948 is a brilliantly engaging story. It is the recipient of the 1993 Milkweed National Fiction Prize. Big thanks to my GR friend, David Putnam, who recommended it to me. This is my first book by Larry Watson. What a wonderful writer!

[Joy D · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a mini masterpiece – mini because it is under 200 pages. Protagonist David tells the story as an adult looking back forty years, when, at age twelve, in 1948, the discovery of family scandal profoundly changed many lives. This excerpt from the prologue provides an idea of what to expect:

“Two months ago, my mother died. She made, as the expression goes, a good death. She came inside the house from working in her garden, and a heart attack, as sudden as a sneeze, felled her in the kitchen. My father’s death, ten years earlier, was less merciful. Cancer hollowed him out over the years until he could not stand up to a stiff wind. And Marie Little Soldier? Her fate contains too much of the story for me to give away.

A story that is now only mine to tell. I may not be the only witness left – there might still be someone in that small Montana town who remembers those events as well as I, but no one knew all three of these people better.

And no one loved them more.”

It is a story that pits family loyalty against justice. The writing is articulate – not a word is wasted. The sense of place is vivid. The characters feel authentic. The social commentary, involving abuse of power and racism against Native Americans, is embedded into the narrative. Watson employs a classic style. He sets the stage at the beginning, then launches into the story. He induces the reader to proceed by providing a new morsel of information that piques curiosity. I set out to read a chapter or two, and before I knew it, I had read the entire book.

Montana 1948 feels evergreen. It is delivered with lucidity, brevity, and humanity. It is both subtle and complex, infused with layers of meaning. It was a delight to read such a masterfully crafted work. I am adding it to my favorites, and certain it will make my top ten for the year.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 1993 novella wonderfully captures a great sense of place of growing up in a small prairie town in Montana and the loss of innocence by a boy experiencing the events and consequences of a case of abuse within his own family.

From a point four decades later, David begins his account with this powerful foreshadowing: “From the summer of my twelfth year I carry a series of images more vivid and lasting than any others of my boyhood and indelible beyond all attempts the years make to erase or fade them.” We are given the disparate images of a Sioux woman sick in bed, another of his father kneeling and pleading to his mother for help, and a third of his mother wielding a shotgun, three people he admits that “no one loved them more.”

David paints an engaging and poignant picture of family life in this community, where his father serves as a Sheriff and his mother as a cleric in county government. David’s life is idyllic, replete with swimming, fishing, and hunting. The family goes often to his grandparent’s farm, where they keep a pony for him. Marie Little Shoulder is a young Native American woman who serves them as housekeeper and effectively as David’s babysitter:

Marie was neither small nor shy. She love to laugh and talk, and she was a great tease, specializing in outrageous lies about everything from strange animal behavior to bloody murders. Then, as soon as she saw she had you gulled, she would say: “Not so, not so!’

Although basically happy, he had the same painful shyness I experienced growing up in rural Oklahoma and the same sense that I was missing some special knowledge that adults have that needed to be passed on (“When the lessons were taught about how to feel confident and at ease in school, in stores, in cafes, with other children or adults, I must have been absent.”) He wishes sometimes his father conformed to his image of a sheriff out of the Wild West, rather than the man whose most dangerous work is to break up brawls by drunks. He also finds himself wishing his mother was happier with the more cultured life she aspired to back in North Dakota where she came from. His love of Marie is pure, but tainted as a source of early romantic visions and occasional shameful, prurient thoughts. He is struggling to make sense of why some people in town and in his family hold Indians in such low esteem. When he wonders why Marie’s war hero boyfriend didn’t go to college:

Then, I knew without being told, as if it were knowledge that I drank in with the water , that college was not for Indians.

The events that rip his family apart develops as a slow building of knowledge that he has to glean by sneaking around to overhead conversations. The adults try to divert his from gaining knowledge about what is going on. At one point, the later narrator breaks through”

But I was on the trail of something that would lead me out of childhood.

At a certain point, David goes to the woods to shoot his gun and ends up carelessly killing a magpie. That is an almost universal experience of rural kids. Watson’s capturing of the aftermath of this casual action is wonderful to me:

I felt strangely calm, as if I had been in a state of high agitation but had now come down, my pulse returned to normal, my breathing slowed, my vision cleared. I needed that, I thought; I hadn’t even known it but I needed to kill something. …I felt the way I did when I woke from an especially disturbing and powerful dream. Even as the dream’s narrative escaped—like trying to hold water in your hand—its emotion stayed behind. Looking at the dead bird’s eye, I realized that these strange, unthought-of connections—sex and death, lust and violence, desire and degradation—are there, there, deep even in a good heart’s chambers.

Though a short book, this story is a gem that will stay in my mind for a long time. I make favorable linkages from other great reads about a growing child trying to transmute the darkness of the adult world into some kind of lessons in life, including “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Erdrich’s “The Round House”, and Ford’s “Canada”.

[Brina · Rating 4 out of 5]

My western kick continues. A goodreads friend commented on one of my reviews that I should read the work of Larry Watson, and, if do, I will not be disappointed. Viewing this as an endorsement, I checked Montana 1948 out of the library not knowing what to expect only that this slim volume takes place in the west and could be read in a few hours. During the late 1940s, the United Stares became a modern nation. Veterans returned from war, entered colleges on the GI Bill, and returned to the work force. In 1947, Major League Baseball integrated and the World Series was broadcast on television for the first time. Other than local heroes returning home, Montana did not feel the effects of a changing nation. In a rural state known more for its landscapes than the people comprising it, Fargo was considered a faraway large city. What happened on the east coast did not register a blip on the radar. This last vestige of rural, western life is the atmosphere that sets the stage for Larry Watson’s modern classic. Although more of a classic coming of age story than a western, Montana in 1948 is a time and place that I would have to see for myself.

David Hayden is middle aged and reminisces about the events during the summer he turned twelve which changed the trajectory of his family history. “From the summer of my twelfth year,” Watson opens, “I carry a series of images more vivid and lasting than any others of boyhood and indelible beyond all attempts the years make to erase or fade them.” Most readers of this novella note how the opening lines reel them in. While not life altering, the stage is set for a tale of events that would change a family’s life. The Hayden family is considered royalty in Mercer County, Montana. David’s grandfather Julian served as county sheriff for years until he begrudgingly retired and passed the job and title onto his son Wesley, David’s father. To Julian, the job meant asserting power over his fellow citizens and keeping the indigenous people in their place. To Wesley, the job stood for doing the right think, even the parts of the job that most people would shudder from. Wesley trained as a lawyer and acted just. His wife Gail practiced a religion that called for doing the just thing at all times, even if this meant standing out in the old western environment of Bentrock, Montana. It was into this family that David Hayden became the first and only grandson, the one who was expected to carry the Hayden family pride to the next generation. This would all change in 1948.

In Montana boys would be boys and would not be tamed in this wild environment. These attributes describe David’s uncle Frank to a T. A sports star and all American boy turned war hero then town doctor, Julian Hayden considers his son to be the king of Mercer County. At times Wesley, a most respectable citizen, is looked down upon by his own family. He would never measure up to Frank in his father’s eyes. It is an open secret in town that Frank Hayden had a preference for red women, and his father hoped that marriage would straighten him out; it did not. The family talked in euphemisms around David, the only child in the family, when referring to Frank’s transgressions. As an only child, David became used to hearing adults speak and developed a larger vocabulary and understanding than most children his age. He still hunted and fished like most boys his age, but starting in 1948, David Hayden was forced to grow up before his time. David Hayden had a front seat to events that would unravel his family, and this is what he chose to look back on forty years later when he starts to tell the tale of Montana in 1948.

Gail Hayden worked outside of the house so she employed a Sioux woman named Marie Little Soldier to watch the house and keep an eye on David. The presence of Marie allows readers to mention the dichotomy of white and indigenous peoples in the west. The 1940s was a time of transition, but de facto segregation still ruled the day in the north. Native American reservations might have been the last parts of the country to enjoy the fruits of integration. Native American writers have written about life on the reservation and have been justly lauded for their work. Larry Watson might have been the first white writer to examine the west through the eyes of what is right and wrong in terms of the indigenous people rather than their white counterparts. Frank Hayden was an all American boy, but his mere presence brought fear to the eyes of indigenous women. David Hayden found this out before most adults and decided to judge Frank impartially rather than as family or as a fellow white man. David viewed his once beloved uncle Frank as an unjust person; taking this view, critics of this book note that Montana 1948 should be viewed as on par with native literature about the west and that Larry Watson should be lauded for taking a stand against white supremacy and the boys will be boys attitude prominent in the west. It is with this perspective that this book has stood the test of time.

Summer is just getting started. With two and a half months of vacation, I am sure that this will not be the last western I read over the warm months. I have plenty more planned. Many view Montana 1948 as a quality coming of age story that will be remembered for generations. I admittedly do not read many of these tales, and there are two which I measure all others against. Larry Watson’s words contain a steady cadence of a middle aged man recalling childhood events that changed his family history. A novella that can be read in a few hours, the pages turned as quickly as a mystery. Montana 1948 might not be the type of western tale of adventure that I would normally pick up, but the writing provided a sense of time and place that would otherwise be lost to history. Short in length, Montana 1948 is a worthy addition to western writing cannon.

4 stars

[Jacob Appel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Montana 1948 is a delightful yet unsettling gem, more a novella than a novel, that grapples with family relationships, the mistreatment of Native Americans, and sexual abuse, but is primarily an insightful coming-of-age story. As works of literary fiction go, Watson's narrative is as technically precise as a Mozart symphony: the voice is pitch-perfect, the pacing masterful, the characters drawn to perfection. Its easy to anticipate the major plot developments, particularly the ending, but this does not take away from the mastery of the world as a whole -- any more than being able to anticipate the end of "To Kill a Mockingbird" undermines the pleasure of the read. I also found Watson to be one of those rare writers (William Styron comes to mind as another) who can write with convincing and moving authenticity about culture other than his own. A lovely work, not to be missed.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

I started this book thinking of another: William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow. My friend Howard had mentioned the latter to me in relation to his last read of this (he’s read this three times; I've read So Long, See You Tomorrow three times) and it's one reason I decided to read this now. I agree that the two are reminiscent of one another; and that’s even though the narrator, David, does not carry the guilt that Maxwell’s narrator does.

Perhaps not enough gets said (at least not by me) about So Long, See You Tomorrow's portrayal of the distinct social classes within a small town, a theme that’s a focus here. It’s the story of a boy’s awakening to the insidious racism in his own small town, a place that tolerates eccentricities, a place where he’s lived idyllically—until the summer of 1948. In that way I am reminded of To Kill a Mockingbird, though David’s father is not a perfect Atticus.

I thought of another book soon after starting this: Richard Ford’s Wildlife. And not just because of the shared Montana setting. The narrator of each—a boy who is an only child—tries to make sense of a crime and his parents’ relationship to the crime and to each other. Ford has said of his novel Canada that its debt to So Long, See You Tomorrow is “obvious”, so there’s that thread of connection too, though I have no idea whom Watson’s influences might be.

Also similar to Maxwell and Ford, Watson’s prose is straightforward yet nuanced. Emotions are rendered in lovely passages and serious themes arise, though the ideas behind them are never belabored. The story is immediate and moves swiftly, though I slowed down during the epilogue, the writing of which elevates the work.

Here’s one more comparison: during the epilogue, I was reminded of the narrator of My Sunshine Away, another novel that exposes the hidden darkness of a supposedly idyllic neighborhood.

If you listen, you can hear your books talking to each other.

[NILTON TEIXEIRA · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a terrific western novel!
This is a very fast read, not because it is less than 200 pages, but because the flow is excellent!
The writing is very simple and direct.
Although the topic (sexual abuse) is not an easy one, I thought that the story was very engaging and well developed.
I love when a book captivates me in a way that makes me totally oblivious of time and space.
This was the author’s first novel, originally published in 1993, and only yesterday I heard about it.
It was awarded the Milkweed National Fiction Prize (works of high literary quality that embody humane values and contribute to cultural understanding).
I still don’t know what kind of public the author was trying to reach. I thought that I was reading a YA fiction but I don’t know if the adult content would be appropriated to young readers (well, there is nothing shocking but some kid may get the wrong impression that carrying a gun is a good idea for stress relief).
The story is not told through the eyes of a boy, as most of the readers seems to think, but by a man remembering those horrible events that took place when he was 12 years old and that was devastating to his family and town.
I really did not want to put this book down. I had to finish it during my lunch break.
I wasn’t very happy with the ending but I did accept it. But I really wished this book was longer.
Thanks to David Putnam for recommending this great read.

[Algernon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find history endlessly amusing, knowing, as I do, that the record of any human community might omit stories of sexual abuse, murder, suicide ... Who knows – perhaps the region’s most dramatic, most sensational stories were not played out in the public view but were confined to small, private places. A doctor’s office, say. A white frame house on a quiet street.

David Hayden looks back from a middle age perspective at the events of the summer of his 12th year (“a series of images more vivid and lasting than any other of my boyhood and indelible beyond all atempts the years make to erase or fade them”). He presents us with a page of personal history that is at the same time a fresco of the times and of the place, capturing the atitudes, the fears, the longings and the hatreds of the people of Montana in 1948, experiencing both the exhilaration of the end of a world war and the incertitudes about what the peace will bring. As he points out in the opening quote, this here is not the official state history, but the hidden, intimate and painful sort of events that reveal the darker shades of the human heart, side by side with the examples of inner strength and ingrained sense of right and wrong that help people deal with tragedy and loss.

The easiest comparison I could make to describe the feel of the novel for me is To Kill A Mockinbird . In support of my argument I present to the jury the innocent young narrator, the father figure who works in the justice system, the isolated, traditional community, the racial tensions revealed by the death of a Native American young woman, the push from the powers that be to deny and to hide the facts of the case. For my own shelving, the story belongs to a larger category of books narrated by children, describing the loss of innocence in beautiful, evocative prose, with nostalgic forays into an idyllic landscape from which they are exiled after taking a bite from the tree of knowledge – knowledge that the grown-ups are not benevolent and godlike, but weak and scared and sometimes cruel and deceitful. I am thinking here of titles that may have little in common with the present novel, other that the young narrator: Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon; The Body by Stephen King (filmed as Stand By Me); The Summer of ’42 by Herman Raucher (also filmed); The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley (ditto); my recent lecture of The Maid’s Version by Daniel Woodrell.

Coming back to the events that precipitate the passage of David into the adult world, I find that I cannot separate them from the location and the moment in time they represent. So the chosen title is apt and descriptive of the vast empty spaces and of the extreme climate that in turn mold the temperament of the inhabitants. Tensions between open range ranchers and farmers, between settlers and Native Americans relocated to rezervations in the most arid corners of the state are aggravated by poor crops and lack of jobs.

In 1948 my father was serving his second term as sheriff of Mercer County, Montana. We lived in Bentrock, the county seat and the only town of any size in the region. In 1948 its population was less than two thousand people.

This is a family story, so let’s meet the Haydens : the local powerbrokers, an impromptu aristocracy started by Grandfather Hayden, who got himself repeatedly elected as sheriff of the county, up until he could retreat to his ranch and pass on the leadership to his son Wesley, our narrator’s father. Wes missed the war due to a lame leg from a childhood accident, and lived for a long time in the shadow of his older brother Frank, a star athlete and a war hero. Frank is a doctor in town, while Wesley gives up on a law career in order to please his authorian father. Both brothers are married, Wesley to a hard-working, quiet tempered and religiously devout woman, Frank to beauty queen from down South. The job of sheriff doesn’t put Wes into a lot of trouble:

The harshness of the land and the flattening effect of the wind and endless sky probably accounted for the relative tranquility of Mercer County. Life was simply too hard, and so much of your attention and energy went into keeping not only yourself but also your family, your crops and your cattle alive, that nothing was left over for raising hell or making trouble.

This peace is threatened when Marie Little Soldier, a young Sioux woman who helps in his household and watches over David when his parents are at work, dies in suspicious circumstances. David is a witness to the events right from the start, eavesdropping and silently spying on his elders, unwittingly discovering that his mother, father, uncle and grandfather are all somehow involved in the drama.
I would leave out the “how” and the “why” of the case from my comments in order to avoid spoilers, and focus more on the changes in the young protagonist. First of all, there is the awareness of death, ready to pounce indiscriminately on the innocent and guiltless. Secondly, there is the revelation of the fallible nature of Adults, of the dark places in their souls and the weaknesses of spirit that they normally hide from the world at large. Davd himself discovers that he can be a killer, with a hunting rifle he receives from his grandfather:

I shot a magpie out of a pinon tree. I felt the way I did when I woke from an especially disturbing and powerful dream. Even as the dream’s narrative escaped – like trying to hold water in your hand – its emotion stayed behind. Looking in the dead bird’s eye, I realized that these strange, unthought-of connections – sex and death, lust and violence, desire and degradation – are there, there, deep in even a good heart’s chambers.

David must cope with this new dangerous and cruel environment, learn to accept responsibility for his actions, stand by his parents even as their world is crumbling down over their heads.
I gave the highest rating for this rather short novel in part for the subject matter, but mostly for the candid, elegant and emotionally charged prose of Larry Watson. His deceptively simple phrases convey economically and efficiently in less than 200 pages about as much as Robert McCammon did in his sprawling Boy’s Life. Another reason to cherish and probably revisit the story in the future is the character of David, a bright kid with a passion for outdoor living, for getting out of the city, even if it is only a small town like Bentrock, to fill his eyes and soul with the quiet and peace of nature. I recognized my own passion for faraway places away from civilization, from noise and pollution and even from people, for a while:

Wildness meant, to me, getting out of town and into the country. Out of town I could simply be, I could feel my self, firm and calm and unmalleable as I could not when I was in school or in any of the usual human communities that seemed to weaken and scatter me. I could sit for an hour in the rocks above the Knife River, asking for no more discourse than that water’s monotonous gabble. I was an inward child, it was true, but beyond that, I felt a contentment outside human society that I couldn’t feel within it.

In the conclusion of the novel there’s a passage about how you can condemn some persons for the evil in the world, but not the place, not society as a whole. David probably still thinks fondly his native Montana, even with the tragedy of Marie still fresh in his memory decades after the events.
It would be interesting to find out if Larry Watson has written another novel as good as this one.

[John Winston · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a solid story with solid writing, tension, suspense, drama, characterization, and good dialogue and descriptions. Then why 3 stars which I rarely give? Well, The author went for a choice here in point of view that compromised the story. I’m sure the goal may have been to create suspense, but for me it just created a muted story where I found myself chomping at the bit wanting to know more about what was going on in the story. I wanted to see the conflict in the room between the Native American girl, Marie and Gail Hayden. I wanted to hear the story that Marie told Wesley Hayden and experience his reaction. I wanted to be a part the initial confrontation between the brothers and the exchanges that followed.

These scenarios are the conflict-laden scenes writers usually relish writing, although they may not necessarily be easy to write, but we get none of this. Instead, we are relegated to sneak around with an unreliable narrator at best in an older David Hayden reflecting on a troubling time in his twelfth year as he get’s maybe a fourth of the story and we are left to contemplate the rest along with him in his mind. It was a short easy read, but I felt like the story was sacrifice for technique. Sometimes just tell the story. That’s what I wanted to read.

[TK421 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started this book almost eight months ago; I also left this book mid-chapter almost eight months ago. I’m not really sure as to why I stopped reading this novel. Perhaps I saw where the story was going and could not get myself to go there with it; perhaps I just saw some shiny object and raced after it. Both scenarios are very plausible. Anyways, I decided to pick the book back up today and finished the last seventy or so pages that I previously abandoned. And let me say that I am so lucky to have gone back and finished this book. I wish I could go back in time and tell the Gavin of eight months ago to proceed with the story, regardless of what I was feeling and thinking at the time. Alas, that cannot be done.

So, the story.

MONTANA 1948 is about family and loyalty to family, murder, cultural relations, and childhood innocence. But, as we all know, family comes in many forms. For the characters of MONTANA 1948 family is centered on the Hayden clan, from the fictitious town of Bentrock, where grandfather was the sheriff, and where father (Wes) is currently the sheriff. The family also contains a mix of Blackfeet Indians, Uncle Frank, who is the local doctor, and Len, who is the deputy sheriff. As the title suggests, the time is 1948; a time when the wounds of war were still fresh, still on the minds of adults and children alike.

Wes is a noble man, full of wisdom, and lives daily with the knowledge that he was unable to fight in the war that made his brother, Frank, a war hero to the small community. For the most part, Bentrock is a quite place—mischievous kids, some ruckus on the nearby reservation, but reserved, well-mannered. But then something comes to light. And this something tests the bonds of the Hayden clan. You see, Wes has found out something horrible that his brother did….many somethings, actually. And when he is put to the test of being a brother or a sheriff, he chooses to be a sheriff, much to the chagrin and frustration of his own father. This is where Larry Watson, author, shines in his storytelling. Written in a simplistic format—memories being retold through the prism of age—and language that is layered but accessible, Watson controls the feelings of the reader. At times I wanted to kill some of the characters myself; other times, I was befuddled or amused or just plain sad at what was transpiring on the pages. For an author to get me to feel all these emotions within such a slim novel (169 pages) is a remarkable feat.

Winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize of 1993, MONTANA 1948, is a story that will resonate with me for a very long time. If you’ve never had the chance to read Larry Watson before, I strongly urge you to find any of his books.

HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION

[Justin Pickett · Rating 4 out of 5]

“You don’t lock up your brother. A respected man. A war hero” (p. 120).

In this fast-paced book, 12-year-old David Hayden recalls the summer when his father, a limping sheriff with a law degree, confronted accusations that his uncle (his father’s brother) had been committing serious crimes against local Native Americans for years.

As the story unfolds, the barriers to justice seem insurmountable. David’s father is a racist who distrusts and negatively stereotypes Native Americans. His uncle, the accused, is the star of both the family and the town, being a popular doctor, an admired athlete, and a decorated veteran. His grandfather, a tyrant who demands absolute fealty within his family, loves David’s accused uncle more than David’s father. His grandfather also happens to be an influential but corrupt ex-sheriff: “You know what your grandad said it means to be a peace officer in Montana? He said it means knowing when to look and when to look away” (p. 93).

I enjoyed this book but I wish it was longer. The action (both legal and family) in the story ended almost as soon as it started and many of the characters were on stage too briefly. The discussion of day-to-day life in Montana and of David’s activities (hunting, fishing, exploring, etc.) could have been expanded and better integrated into the main storyline.

1) Story (4/5)
2) Writing (4/5)
3) Originality (3/5)
4) Characters (3/5)
5) Set pieces (3/5)
6) Suspense (4/5)
7) Ending (2/5)
8) Relationships (romantic or otherwise) (4/5)
9) Dialogue (5/5)

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Catching up….

This was one of our Library Book Discussion selections. What made this one particularly satisfying for everyone was that it was only about 175 pages long! And for anyone who has read any of my reviews, this for me, is the perfect size book to read in one sitting.

Murder. Intrigue. Coming-of-age story.

Narrated by character David who is an all-American 12-year-old in a fictional town of Bentrock, Montana.

It starts off innocently enough when his housekeeper, a Sioux girl named Marie, falls ill. David’s Uncle Frank, a local physician and war hero shows up to diagnose the illness.

Instead…Marie accuses him of rape.

David’s mother convinces her husband Wesley, the town sheriff, to look into the allegations about his brother.

In an attempt to cover up the allegations, Frank does something and lies about his actions. (No spoilers from me.)

Meanwhile, David witnesses a suspicious occurrence about his Uncle Frank. David bravely informs his parents. When Wesley confronts Frank, Frank doesn’t deny the accusation.

Also, Frank’s actions with other local Indian women come into question.

But…As readers not everything may be what it seems at first, and sometimes it is the underdog who has to rise to power.

In this case…What will Wesley do – will it be loyalty or justice?

Quick, easy-to-read, exciting tale with moral dilemmas. Makes for the perfect book discussion selection.

[Suzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

4 1/2 stars

I love a "looking back on life" story. This one is told by 50-something David "Davey" Hayden, who tells us of an incident in the summer of 1948 when he was twelve that changed the course of many lives. He, his Sheriff Dad and Mom live in a tiny town in the Northeast corner of Montana, bordering Canada, North Dakota and the Fort Warren Indian Reservation. Lots of layers of interest in this short (169pp) novel. A beautifully written portrayal of how standing up for what's right can have far-reaching, unexpected and often unintended consequences. Recommended!

Update: I would be remiss if I didn't mention that this book reminded me of another "looking back on life" gem, So Long, See You Tomorrow.

Why I'm reading this: When I recommended News of the World to a friend, she thought I might like this one. A sort of buddy read. :)

[Tooter · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 Stars!

[♪ Kim N · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommended. Powerful, concise and beautifully written.

David Hayden is the son of the local sheriff and part of a powerful and influential family in the small town of Bentrock, Montana. He is 12 years old in the summer of 1948 when a shocking crime disrupts his seemingly idyllic life and forces him to confront adult motives, failings and emotions.

This is my favorite kind of book; a character driven story that explores family dynamics, morally complex questions and concepts of justice. The voice and observations of the child narrator are more than credible. The conversations feel real. There are no words wasted and nothing to lessen the impact of the sad and inevitable conclusion.

I thank Richard Derus (whose favorite books, according to his profile, are "good, well-written ones") for making me aware of Montana 1948 and author Larry Watson.

[Emmkay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quiet, tightly written short coming of age novel. Twelve year-old David Hayden’s father trained as a lawyer, but is sheriff in their small postwar Montana town, to the disappointment of David’s mother. It’s an elected role, but effectively passed down from David’s powerful grandfather. David is somewhat aware of family politics - for example, he sees that his grandfather strongly favours not David’s father but his other son, handsome war hero Frank, who is the town doctor. The novel centres around events when the Hayden family housekeeper, a young Native American woman, becomes sick and is adamant that she doesn’t want Frank to treat her. Frank’s penchant for what David’s grandfather dismissively calls ‘red meat’ requires David’s father to consider whether he can balance the demands of family with the demands of justice.

A good read, following a not unexpected arc. There is a lot of David lurking and overhearing key adult conversations, perhaps too much, but when things grow fraught in families the initial inclination to keep things from the children can be forgotten. Some shades of To Kill a Mockingbird, but David’s father isn’t Atticus Finch, he’s a less-loved son with a bad knee and a series of unenviable duties.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coming-of-age books have long captured the interest of readers, from contemporary classics like Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird to Louise Erdrich’s excellent novel The Round House. In the very best of these stories, a young boy or girl is forced to witness the ugliness of society and then must move forward – suddenly older, wiser and sobered.

And so it is here with Montana 1948, an absolutely breathtaking and spare novel, with images so searing that the line between reality and fiction was totally blurred.

The premise: 12-year-old David Hayden – only son of the Bentrock, Montana sheriff, grandson of the dominating ranch owner and former sheriff, and nephew to the town’s doctor – has its world turned upside down when Marie, the Sioux housekeeper, accuses his uncle of unspeakable things. The aftermath sets brother against brother, son against father, and the plainspoken townspeople against the voiceless Indians.

In the space of a few weeks, David will see first-hand what occurs when practicality and expediency are set against moral absolutism and when long-time family loyalty comes crashing against one’s personal sense of what is right and what is just.

I cannot give enough accolades for this book. There is not one single excess word; each word reflects the purity of prose that is the mark of only the finest writers. Yet in a mere 169 pages, Larry Watson sets up a situation of such moral complexity – and introduces characters that are so real, vibrant and flawed – that it is literally impossible to read the book in more than one sitting. This superbly rendered novel has all the markings of a classic. It is a near-perfect book. 6 stars.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a re-read of another title that I would call a perfect little book. Over the years I have recommended Montana, 1948 so many times to readers that I felt the need to go back and give it another read, just to make sure I still knew what I was talking about. I do. The novella is that perfect example of a suspenseful literary title, and the perfect prescription for literary readers grown bored with navel-gazing, and crime readers grown weary of the formulaic nature that even the best mystery series can be prone to. Far more often than one would expect this little 1993 title has come up when I’m talking with readers about books that they’re really loved. The book is tightly constructed and doesn’t really allow me to relate much plot, as the discoveries are paced so well. Through the wistful voice of a grown man looking back at his Western childhood that will seem familiar to fans of Cather’s My Antonia or Richeter’s The Sea of Grass, we gradually learn of the rivaly of the Hayden brothers, one a war hero and doctor, the other a sheriff. Soon a shameful secret is revealed, and sets in motion an unavoidable conflict between the two men, with unforeseen consequences. “A good book is twice as good if it is short,” said Balthasar Gracian. Yes, I agree.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great American Western novel - I'm on a hot streak!

[Ms.pegasus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel opens with a series of disturbing snapshots. They emanate, unedited, from the mind of 12-year-old David Hayden back in 1948. Unbidden, they have resurfaced many times in his life, impervious to the softening haze of time. Experienced in their totality they will form less of a linear narrative and more of an impasto of emotion to David's adult self.

1948. Forget the unifying effect of World War II on the nation. Forget the Pima Native American Ira Hayes at Iwo Jima. Forget the “Code-Talkers.” Larry Watson re-creates a parochial small town West eager to settle back into comfortable normality. “The harshness of the land and the flattening effect of wind and endless sky probably accounted for the relative tranquility of Mercer County. Life was simply too hard, and so much of your attention and energy went into keeping not only yourself but also your family, your crops, and your cattle alive, that nothing was left over for raising hell or making trouble.” (p.4)

Making trouble might have included questioning why Ronnie Tall Bear, an all-round star athlete, wasn't snapped up by some college recruiter. Closer to home, making trouble might have meant opposing the will of Grandpa Hayden, the domineering family patriarch. For decades he had ruled as sheriff. When he retired he decreed that his son Wes should succeed him despite Wes' training and ambitions to become a lawyer.

Grandpa Hayden was a product of a by-gone era, the days of the open-range. He voiced his racism and misogyny crudely, without apology – and why shouldn't he? Stubborn and opinionated, he had done all right: one son, Frank, was a war hero and now the local doctor; the other, Wes, was his successor as town sheriff and father to his (so far) only grandson. He was a self-made man who viewed his sons in his own image. At 12, David could accept all these facts without thinking about them. This was his family. It was a good family, a tight-knit family.

Despite the first person narrative, this is not a coming-of-age story. True, David will suddenly be plunged from the secure truths of childhood into the ambiguous crossroads of adulthood, but this is for the most part the story of the people around him rather than his own story. Nor is this a mystery. All the pieces have been laid out in the opening chapter. What is extraordinary is Watson's ability to create a sense of locale and characters he imbues with individuality through the briefest bits of dialogue.

Even the ending offered a satisfying sense of closure. It is fitting that David rejects the career paths of attorney or law enforcement. He becomes a history teacher with the private understanding that behind the conventional truth there are always more meaningful truths: “Who knows – perhaps any region's most dramatic, most sensational stories were not played out in the public view but were confined to small, private places.” (p.164)

[Vivian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I hadn't taken so long in starting this book which has been malingering on my TBR list for awhile upon a family recommendation. Riveting story, austere prose, and bald-faced observances all make the revelation of hypocrisy, prejudice, and complicity by inaction horrifyingly main street.

[Jeanette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clear story telling in this novella. Great locale feel and quick, yet deep characterizations. Also quite sad.