Crazy Mountain

by Elise Atchison

Winner of The Eludia Award, Elise Atchison's Crazy Mountain chronicles a rapidly changing place and community through the diverse and conflicting stories of the people who live in a fictional mountain valley in Montana over nearly half a century (1970-2015). As newly built roads carve through the primal wild, and the rural landscape transforms into subdivisions, McMansions and resorts, conflicts escalate between locals and newcomers, developers and environmentalists, the wealthy and the homeless. Through multiple perspectives we hear the voices of ranchers, real estate agents, carpenters, artists, New Agers, Native American activists, landscapers, movie stars, musicians, pizza delivery drivers, gun-toting fundamentalists, and others including Kate, a troubled young woman who becomes homeless over the course of the book and whose own story in many ways mirrors the destruction and resurrection of the land. These varied threads weave together into a rich tapestry of place, exploring timely themes of housing booms and homelessness, loss of open land to development, cultural clashes, and the correlation between how we treat the natural world and how we treat each other, especially the most vulnerable among us. What does it mean to lose a place we love, and what does it mean to gain from it? Perhaps it depends on perspective.

268 pages, Paperback

Published May 31, 2022

Reviews

[Barbara Bernheim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elise Atchison’s Crazy Mountain is a revealing collection of stories all connected by people and circumstances as they discover the beauty of Montana. Using a fictitious town she illustrates the various points of view held toward settling into life in this stunning landscape either with careful reverence or with total abandon. Such is what we are seeing in this vast state. Through these narratives we can explore our own thoughts about the future of wide open spaces in the mountain west. I totally recommend this book. It draws you in and keeps you curious and thinking all the way.

[Janet Muirhead · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being a person who loves nature, especially the mountains, animals, both wild and tame, and the simple life, I loved this book. The many, varied characters, both sympathetic and not so nice, whose lives were tied to the mountain in various ways were well drawn. The plot, told through the eyes of various characters over time shows how greed can work against the wonders of nature while trying to exploit it. I recommend it.

[Elizabeth Hanson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the idea of this book... glimpses of a neighborhood over time from different points of view. I felt some of the characters were too one dimensional.

[RJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Through a series of interwoven stories about a mountain in Montana and the people in relationship with it over the course of the 20th and early 21st century, this book explores the problems and complexities of "development" and conservation in the US West.