Montana 1948

Montana 1948

by Larry Watson
Montana 1948

Montana 1948

by Larry Watson

eBook

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Overview

The tragic tale of a Montana family ripped apart by scandal and murder: “a significant and elegant addition to the fiction of the American West” (Washington Post).
 
In the summer of 1948, twelve-year-old David Hayden witnessed and experienced a series of cataclysmic events that would forever change the way he saw his family. The Haydens had been pillars of their small Montana town: David’s father was the town sheriff; his uncle Frank was a war hero and respected doctor. But the family’s solid foundation was suddenly shattered by a bombshell revelation.
 
The Hayden’s Sioux housekeeper, Marie Little Soldier, tells them that Frank has been sexually assaulting his female Indian patients for years—and that she herself was his latest victim. As the tragic fallout 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 loyalty and justice.
 
Winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781571318039
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Publication date: 09/23/2020
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 186
Sales rank: 115,333
Lexile: 880L (what's this?)
File size: 742 KB

About the Author

Larry Watson was born in 1947 in Rugby, North Dakota. He grew up in Bismarck, North Dakota, and married his high school sweetheart. 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.

Larry Watson is the author of five novels and a chapbook of poetry. Watson’s fiction has been published in more than ten foreign editions, and has received prizes and awards from Milkweed Press, Friends of American Writers, Mountain and Plains Booksellers Association, New York Public Library, Wisconsin Library Association, and Critics’ Choice. Montana 1948 was nominated for the first IMPAC Dublin International Literary Prize. The movie rights to Montana 1948 and Justice have been sold to Echo Lake Productions and White Crosses has been optioned for film.

He has published short stories and poems in Gettysburg Review, New England Review, North American Review, Mississippi Review, and other journals and quarterlies. His essays and book reviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and other periodicals. His work has also been anthologized in Essays for Contemporary Culture, Imagining Home, Off the Beaten Path, Baseball and the Game of Life, The Most Wonderful Books, These United States, and Writing America.

Watson taught writing and literature at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point for 25 years before joining the faculty at Marquette University in 2003.

What People are Saying About This

Louise Erdich

A beautiful novel about the meaning of place and evolution of courage....A wonderful book.

Reading Group Guide

The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for discussion in your reading of Larry Watson's Montana 1948. We hope the following information will enrich your discussion of the book.

Reading Group Discussion Points

  1. What motivates Frank Hayden's final act? (The author has characterized it as both a selfish and a selfless act.)

  2. Late in the novel, Gail Hayden changes her attitude. She no longer wants her husband to continue the course of action that earlier she encouraged him to follow. What causes her to change?

  3. What does Wesley Hayden mean by his admonishment not to "blame Montana"?

  4. A great deal of attention is paid to locating Bentrock (a fictional community) on the map. Why? What role does the setting play in the novel?

  5. Whose story is this? Wesley's? David's? Why?

  6. Who is the moral center of the story? Why?

  7. How does prejudice play into the story?

  8. Why is Wesley Hayden especially concerned when his son David tells him that Len McAuley might "know something"?

  9. What would the outcome of the story have been had David's father publicly arrested his uncle? Would things have turned out better? Worse? Would you have done the same thing as Wesley had it been your family?

  10. Was there any justice for the crimes committed by Uncle Frank?

  11. Most of the novel's action takes place in 1948. Why did the author choose that year? Could the events occur today?

  12. In what ways is the novel about privilege and the abuse of power?

  13. What is the effect of David Hayden telling this story so many years after the fact?

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