Cold Country by Russell Rowland

PRAISE FOR COLD COUNTRY

“This is a love letter to the small-town, rough-and-tumble, fisticuff-heavy ranch life of 50 years ago. ... In straight-ahead, unfussy prose, Rowland keeps the novel humming along. … A quick-moving, plainspoken, mostly charming exploration of the hardscrabble life of the livestock rancher of old.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The murder mystery propels the story, but Rowland’s clear-eyed look at mid-20th-century rural life provides a satisfying portrait of the frayed bonds within a community whose members must sometimes depend on people who repel them.” —Publishers Weekly

“Rowland captures Big Sky country in 1968 with aplomb. This is not a rough-and-tumble Western by any means, as the contemplative nature of what motivates a person to do right or wrong is his focus. ... Rowland reveals his mastery of the human condition through the lives of ordinary people in the state he clearly loves.” —Historical Novel Society

“Cold Country has a remarkable ability to get the reader to care and to empathize with this unlikely cast of men, women and children who struggle to stay united as an unsolved murder threatens to bring out the worst in their small ranching community.” —Mountain Journal

“The puzzle pieces will hit you like a sledgehammer. ... [A] must read if you like small town settings, relationships that go deeper than suspected, and characteristics you didn’t see coming.” —Defrosting Cold Cases

“Russell Rowland’s new novel, set in the shadow of the Big Horn Mountains, is a murder mystery of sorts, but while readers are rapidly turning pages to learn who did it, they’ll also find that Rowland is peeling away the layers of a larger mystery. How can it be that those to whom we are closest—our friends, our neighbors, our family members remain so unknowable to us? Cold Country is remarkable in many respects, perhaps chiefly in the way Russell Rowland finds extraordinary drama in ordinary lives.” — Larry Watson, author of Montana 1948 and Let Him Go

“I can’t think of an easier pick for a book club than a page-turning murder mystery with multifaceted characters, a profoundly satisfying ending, and plenty to induce a spirited debate! In Cold Country, Russell Rowland places his finger on the pulse of a small Montana ranching community and the outsiders hoping to set up a home there. Writing in the tradition of Hemingway, Steinbeck, and McCarthy, Rowland’s powerful style fools with its simplicity, and he often turns his eye toward the harsh realities of daily living (stitching the wounds of livestock, facilitating a birth, disciplining a child) to uncover beauty, tenderness, and meaning. As he digs deep into the hearts of his characters, we recognize our own tangled relationships, the burden of the secrets we keep, our own prejudices, our fears of being alone, unloved, or unwanted. Like the land he writes about, this book will leave you humbled, wrestling, and in awe.” —Susan Henderson, author of Up from the Blue and Flicker of Old Dreams

“Years ago, I wrote that Russell Rowland was like a cross between Richard Ford and John Irving. I hereby revise that opinion. He’s better. He’s warmer, more relaxed and also more alert to the tensions between people. There’s a moment early in the book where a key character tastes some blood in his mouth during a quiet neighborhood chat. I’ve had that moment in a faraway, very different place. I was suddenly right there in Rowland’s world, in the shadow of the Bighorn Mountains. That’s fine writing. I try not to taste blood in my mouth often. Cold Country is one of the best books I’ve read in half a century of very hard living and reading. Where it goes, I won’t even try to tell you. But this is the difference between a kind of good writing and someone who can actually tell a story. Maybe we all live in a small community.” —Kris Saknussemm, author of Private Midnight and Reverend America

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Russell Rowland was born in Bozeman, MT in 1957. He has an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University. Cold Country is his fifth novel and his seventh book. His first novel, In Open Spaces, was called ‘a novel of muted elegance’ by the New York Times. He lives in Billings, Montana.