Cold Country - by Russell Rowland (Paperback)

About the Book

"Montana, 1968: The small town of Paradise Valley is ripped open when popular rancher and notorious bachelor Tom Butcher is found murdered one morning, beaten to death by a baseball bat. Suspicion among the tight-knit community immediately falls on the outsider, Carl Logan, who recently moved in with his family and his troubled son Roger. What Carl doesn't realize is that there are plenty of people in Paradise Valley who have reason to kill Tom Butcher. Complications arise when the investigating officers discover that Tom Butcher had a secret--a secret he kept even from Junior Kirby, a lifelong rancher and Butcher's best friend. As accusations fly and secrets are revealed one after another, the people of Paradise Valley learn how deeply Tom Butcher was embedded in their lives, and that they may not have known him at all. With familiar mastery, [the author] returns to rural Montana to explore a small town torn apart by secrets and suspicions, and how the tenuous bonds of friendship struggle to hold against the differences that would sever us"--

Book Synopsis

Montana, 1968: The small town of Paradise Valley is ripped open when popular rancher and notorious bachelor Tom Butcher is found murdered one morning, beaten to death by a baseball bat. Suspicion among the tight-knit community immediately falls on the outsider, Carl Logan, who recently moved in with his family and his troubled son Roger. What Carl doesn't realize is that there are plenty of people in Paradise Valley who have reason to kill Tom Butcher.

Complications arise when the investigating officers discover that Tom Butcher had a secret--a secret he kept even from Junior Kirby, a lifelong rancher and Butcher's best friend. As accusations fly and secrets are revealed one after another, the people of Paradise Valley learn how deeply Tom Butcher was embedded in their lives, and that they may not have known him at all.

With familiar mastery, Russell Rowland, the author of In Open Spaces and Fifty-Six Counties, returns to rural Montana to explore a small town torn apart by secrets and suspicions, and how the tenuous bonds of friendship struggle to hold against the differences that would sever us.

Review Quotes

Past praise for Russell Rowland

For Fifty-Six Counties: A Montana Journey

"Fifty-Six Counties, a book I read with pleasure and admiration, is a great companion for those who already love Montana and for those anxious to get a real sense of the place without the salesmanship."
̶ Tom McGuane, The Cadence of Grass and Gallatin Canyon

Russell Rowland is fiercely devoted to the atonement and beauty that are the hallmarks of all great works of art. Rowland names our collective loneliness, but does so with a fierce and tender devotion to the mothers and fathers of all races, all cultures. In so doing he restores us not only to each other but to Mother Earth. His unique, person to person path through the history, present, and future of Montana is a vision both elegant and muscular, rich with the scents of forest and arid lands, violence and community, ranch life and city life, conservation and industry and ore. Fifty-Six Counties is animated by the numinous even as it humbles us, makes us more sane, and draws us into a new and invigorating experience of the essence of life. This is a book for Montana, for the nation, and for the world.
̶ Shann Ray, American Masculine, Balefire, and American Copper

"I can't wait for others to discover this book. Thoughtful, wise, funny, sincere, and deep: those are the words that come to mind when reading this treasure. Rowland is a humble observer, but he's also willing to dig deep and bravely, offering astute reflections on the state, its resources, its peoples, its history, and its charm and its dangers. In a voice all his own, Rowland proves to be warm and personable, and yet cutting and real--basically, one couldn't wish for a better guide to the state of Montana. This book is utterly unique. A gorgeous accomplishment."
̶ Laura Pritchett, Stars Go Blue

"Everything about Montana is big: its proverbial sky, its mountains, its wide open spaces. And yet, Russell Rowland has managed to capture all that grand landscape--and the people who inhabit it--into the intimacy of a single book. Fifty-Six Counties is a remarkable book: a macro-focused narrative using a wide-angle lens. If you have room for only one book about Montana on your shelf, make it this one.
̶ David Abrams, Fobbit and Brave Deeds

For In Open Spaces

"This heartfelt exploration of the lives and hard times of a prairie ranch family fairly pulses with the intrigues of existence. Russell Rowland has given us a vivid and distinctive piece of homespun to take its proper place in the literary quilt of the West."
̶ Ivan Doig, A Trip to Wisdom and This House of Sky, National Book Award finalist

"Charged with dramatic tension -- a joy to read."
̶ Ha Jin, Waiting, winner of the National Book Award

"[An] outstanding debut...Rowland's examination of family dynamics is poignant and revealing...."
̶ Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A family epic that has a muted elegance....A gracefully understated novel."
̶ New York Times Review of Books

"In Open Spaces is sage, humane, and immensely readable."
̶ C. Michael Curtis, senior editor, The Atlantic Monthly

"A heartfelt debut...[An] unpretentious, involving story told with unfaltering authority."
̶ Kirkus Reviews

"As a lifelong reader of books written about the west, particularly those about Montana, Russell Rowland's In Open Spaces is as good as it gets....a powerful book."
̶ C.J. Box, author of Open Season and Savage Run

"Like Norman McLean's A River Runs Through It, ...Rowland...brings [Montana's] unique beauty alive...."
̶ Denver Post

This is a love letter to the small-town, rough-and-tumble, fisticuff-heavy ranch life of fifty years ago. ... 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-twentieth-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

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

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

Russell Rowland's new novel, set in the shadow of the Bighorn 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.
--Kris Saknussemm, author of Private Midnight and Reverend America