Lookout

by Christine Byl

Overview

Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, Lookout tells the story of the Kinzlers, a complex working-class family firmly rooted in northwestern Montana.

Josiah and Margaret Kinzler have forged an unusual bond marked by both tenderness and distance; their daughters, Cody and Louisa, grow up watching their parents navigate what it means to be true to yourself and what that costs. Lookout offers a gripping dual coming-of-age: Cody's from stoic ranch kid to hotshot firefighter to resilient woman learning to rely on others, and Josiah's as he struggles to thrive in a world that has misunderstood him. Bound by their love of the land, the Kinzlers work to bridge the gaps created by what they leave unspoken. Lookout brings to life a family coming out to itself, at home in a new and nuanced American West.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781646053803
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	07/22/2025
Pages:	326
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Christine Byl is the author of Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods (Beacon Press, 2013), a book about trail crews, tools, wildness, gender, and labor; it was shortlisted for the 2014 Willa Award in nonfiction. Christine has worked as a professional trail-builder for 25+ years. She lives with her family in Interior Alaska on the traditional lands of the Dene.

Editorial Reviews

Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction's 2023 First Novel Prize
Winner of a 2023 Montana Book Award Honor

"A first-rate story-teller."—William Kittredge

"To read Byl is to marvel."—David James Duncan

"Byl’s gift to readers is refusal of stereotype and received language about a place often and easily stereotyped. In the absence of labels for what we think we ought to know about place and people, Byl allows a world of nuance to come to life."—Jessica Johnson, Terrain.org

From the Publisher

2023-01-25
A debut novel chronicles the lives of a father and daughter in Montana.

Early on in Byl’s novel, artisan Josiah Kinzler explains the dangers of playing with matches to his daughter Cody, then 9. “Cody. Every fire starts small,” he says, in a phrase that reads like a statement of purpose for the rest of the book. The novel begins in 1985 and follows the Kinzler family—primarily Josiah and Cody but also Cody’s sister, Louisa, and their mother, Margaret—over the decades that follow. While the bulk of the book is told from an omniscient point of view, some chapters offer first-person accounts from different members of the cast, major and minor characters alike. This can be revealing—there’s a contrast between Cody as seen from a distance and the more informal, irreverent tone of her narration, for instance. Josiah remains an intriguing and enigmatic figure, haunted by his mother’s suicide and his own feelings of depression. Late in the book, when characters read a letter from him, his reference to “what’s broken in me” puts some of his previous actions in another context. But he also has moments of bliss throughout—as when he takes on as an apprentice a man named Freddy, who soon becomes something more. It’s here that the first-person sections truly click. “Many times I’ve stayed with my back to him longer than needed, to savor his footsteps closing the distance between us,” Freddy thinks—an elegant image that gives a sense of the intimacy they share. At times, though, the novel’s pacing doesn’t entirely click—but the sense of community, family, and buried secrets at its heart is almost tactile in its presence.

A deeply felt, unconventionally told family story.

Kirkus Reviews