The Crazies - by Amy Gamerman (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A dazzling piece of narrative nonfiction about land lust and the American West, The Crazies tells the story of a wind farm that triggers a 21st century range war between a struggling fifth-generation rancher and the billionaires next door.

Most locals in Big Timber, Montana learn to live with the wind. Rick Jarrett sought his fortune in it. Like his pioneer ancestors who staked their claims in the Treasure State, he believed in his right to make a living off the land--and its newest precious resource, million-dollar wind.

Trouble was, Jarrett's neighbors were some of the wealthiest and most influential men in America, trophy ranchers who'd come West to enjoy magnificent mountain views, not stare at 500-foot wind turbines.

And so began an epic showdown that would pull in an ever-widening cast of larger-than-life characters, including a Texas oil and gas tycoon, a roguish wind prospector, a Crow activist fighting for his tribe's rights to the mountains they hold sacred, and an Olympic athlete-turned-attorney whose path to redemption would lead to Jarrett's wind farm. A wildly entertaining yarn, the brawl over Crazy Mountain Wind would become a fight over the values that define us as Americans--and a window into how this country actually works. All the while, the most coveted rangeland in the West was being threatened by forces more powerful than anything one man could muster: dwindling snowpack, record drought, raging wildfires.

The Crazies is a Western for a warming planet, full of cowboys and billionaires and billionaire cowboys. But it's also so much more. It's an exquisitely reported, ruggedly beautiful elegy for a vanishing way of life and a bighearted inquiry into how you can love a place so much you risk destroying it.

Review Quotes

"Empire of Pain, but for the Wild West."
--Amazon Book Review, Editors' Pick

"A gripping tale of the struggle to preserve and exploit the American West, this riveting narrative reads like Yellowstone meets Matlock."
--Tom Clavin, #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of The Heart of Everything That Is

"An absolutely wild ride through the untamed frontier of American culture. Gamerman brings alive the modern West in a breakneck story that's outlandish but also almost mythically familiar. It turns out that the old fights over the nature of American freedom aren't over."
--Christopher Leonard, New York Times bestselling author of The Lords of Easy Money

"Like the ferocious winds that that roar down from the mountains and across the pains of central Montana, The Crazies has the power to leave you feeling walloped, whip-sawed, and wildly invigorated, all within the same breath. An epic tale of greed and resilience, this narrative that boasts all the page-turning compulsiveness of a true-to-life thriller."
--Kevin Fedarko, New York Times bestselling author of A Walk in the Park

"Will drive readers to the book's conclusion in a page-turning frenzy."
--New York Journal of Books

"The Crazies has the sweep of The Grapes of Wrath and the storytelling power of Wallace Stegner's The Big Rock Candy Mountain."
--Rinker Buck, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Oregon Trail

"Excellent. A timely telling of change and inequality in the American West with reporting I trust, characters I'm drawn to, and writing that sparkles."
--Anna Sale, host of the podcast Death, Sex & Money and author of Let's Talk About Hard Things

"A fascinating page turner that would make a tremendous TV series. In a majestic Montana setting, a hard-headed cattleman, a high-rolling Vegas lawyer, a slew of fantastically entitled billionaires, a Native American activist, and other larger-than-life characters become embroiled in a battle royale over wind power."
--Richard Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Dispatches from Pluto

"A fascinating story about the new energy economy. If you want to understand why change does--or doesn't--happen in America, read The Crazies."
--Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction

"An astonishing feat of reporting and storytelling, in the tradition of courtroom classics like A Civil Action. Highly recommended!"
--Nate Blakeslee, New York Times bestselling author of American Wolf

About the Author

Amy Gamerman has written about real estate and culture for The Wall Street Journal for more than two decades. The Crazies is her first book.