Places I Know and Love: A Guest Post by Callan Wink
Junot Diaz raves about Beartooth, calling it, “One of the best and fiercest heist stories since A Simple Plan . . . Beartooth is unstoppable, the literary treasure you’ve been looking for.” We couldn’t agree more. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Callan Wink (August) on writing Beartooth, creating his characters and reflecting on his love for Montana.
Hardcover $28.00
Beartooth: A Novel
Beartooth: A Novel
By Callan Wink
In Stock Online
Hardcover $28.00
Two brothers in dire straits, living on the edge of Yellowstone, agree to a desperate act of survival in this taut, propulsive novel reminiscent of the works of Peter Heller and Donald Ray Pollock.
Two brothers in dire straits, living on the edge of Yellowstone, agree to a desperate act of survival in this taut, propulsive novel reminiscent of the works of Peter Heller and Donald Ray Pollock.
I’ve lived in southwest Montana for over twenty years, working as a fly-fishing guide, and the mountains and the rivers, especially those around Yellowstone National Park, are places I know and love. While writing Beartooth, I wanted this environment to occupy almost as much space on the page as any character. I’ve always thought that there’s something inherently demanding about the natural world in Montana; it’s an environment that refuses to be relegated to the mere background.
Thad and Hazen, the two brothers at the heart of the story, are more in tune with this natural world than most. While they manage to eke out a living cutting and selling firewood, it’s a precarious living at best. When the bills start piling up after the death of their father, they’re persuaded to undertake a dangerous (and illegal) enterprise in Yellowstone Park. While the novel does contain elements of action and suspense, at its heart, I’d say that the story is largely concerned with the challenges of familial responsibility.
Thad is the older brother and frequently feels the burden of keeping the younger, more impulsive, Hazen out of trouble. The increasing strain of financial difficulties and the unexpected return of their often absent mother, not to mention the menacing presence of a kilt-wearing bagpipe-playing figure known only as The Scot, add up to a mounting set of circumstances that force Thad to make hard choices.
This story’s premise arose largely from a barroom tale I heard well over a decade ago. A hazy, probably mostly untrue recounting of someone who knew someone who’d packed a raft into a wild section of Yellowstone Park and floated out under the cover of darkness with a load of contraband. As a person who loves rivers and the Yellowstone River especially, there’s a definite allure to the thought of descending a stretch of river where floating is off-limits. If I can’t actually do it in real life, I thought it would be fun to explore it in fiction.
In my opinion, many recent Hollywood portrayals of Montana do something to mythologize the state in an inauthentic way. Montana, as I know it, is a place where grit and desperation, hard work and hardship, can and do occur against a backdrop of rugged beauty. People here have a saying: You can’t eat the scenery. I hope Beartooth transports readers to the mountains and rivers of Montana in a way that is true to the place itself.