Abraham Markem was awarded the Medal of Honor for valor in the Korean War and happily returned to his native Montana amid the small town's celebration of the returning of their honored war hero. They built a house for him' and he married soon after and had twin sons. Life was perfect for the Markems until his sons enlisted and died in the Vietnam war, and his wife was tragically attacked and killed by a pack of wolves amid the beauty of the Montana wilderness area. An old man now, he wanted to end his life in grand style until he happened upon a strange white dog that was trapped in a raccoon trap. The dog was not like any other and soon Abe was rejuvenated as the dog's astounding gifts amazed everyone and gave him a reason to continue his most amazing life.

By shedding light on Montana's first women homesteaders--determined 19th- and early 20th-century pioneers--Carter reveals inspiring stories filled with joy, tragedy, and redemption.

Lori, the heroine of this rousing narrative, is attempting to flee the hectic East Coast for a better life in the West. She is a child of the Seventies who feels misled by the rebellious "boomer" generation and disappointed with life in 1980s New Jersey. Spurred by the tale of her pioneering grandparents, who immigrated to Montana, and following her friend Madeleine, who has all the answers, Lori quits her job, loosens her ties, and sets off into a wild frontier. Lori's story is one of love for people and for places that are more mythic than real. Her pursuit is as painfully familiar as it is impossible: she seeks meaning in life while working dead-end jobs, falls in love with uninterested partners, and plans a future that seems doomed from the start. Somehow, though, she persists and ultimately finds her place as a twenty-first-century pioneer.

A naturalist on Montana’s academic frontier, passionate conservationist Morton J. Elrod was instrumental in establishing the Department of Biology at the University of Montana, as well as Glacier National Park and the National Bison Range. In Montana’s Pioneer Naturalist, the first in-depth assessment of Elrod’s career, George M. Dennison reveals how one man helped to shape the scholarly study of nature and its institutionalization in the West at the turn of the century. Elrod moved to Missoula in 1897, just four years after the state university’s founding, and participated in virtually every aspect of university life for almost forty years. To reveal the depths of this pioneer scientist’s influence on the growth of his university, his state, and the academic fields he worked in, author George M. Dennison delves into state and university archives, including Elrod’s personal papers. Although Elrod was an active participant in bison conservation and the growth of the National Park Naturalist Service, much of his work focused on Flathead Lake, where he surveyed local life forms and initiated the university’s biological station—one of the first of its kind in the United States. Yet at heart Elrod was an educator who desired to foster in his students a “love of nature,” which, he said, “should give health to any one, and supply knowledge of greatest value, either to the individual or to society, or to both.” In this biography of a prominent scientist now almost forgotten, Dennison—longtime president of the University of Montana—demonstrates how Elrod’s scholarship and philosophy regarding science and nature made him one of Montana’s most distinguished naturalists, conservationists, and educators.

Based on the hand-written memoir of Fred Van Blaricom, this true story recounts a life of hardship and hope in the Montana Territory during the late 1800s. Told in Fred’s affable voice and rich with historical detail, A Hard Won Life is a coming-of-age story packed with adventures and grounded in the remarkable lives of the earliest homesteaders—men and women—of the Lower Yellowstone. Meet young Teddy Roosevelt, famed buffalo hunter Vic Smith, saloon owners, devious outlaws, and persistent sheriffs. Working as a cowboy, young Freddie broke horses, helped catch a horsethief, survived the cattle-killing winter of 1886, and at age ten rode alone 100 miles to work a season on a ranch in the Dakota Territories. Fred’s was a life of struggle against many obstacles, but he overcame them or abided them with no complaint. As he himself put it: “The hero was throwed, but the horse was tamed.” Meticulously researched and superbly written, A Hard Won Life is a tale of bravery, determination, and one boy’s embodiment of the spirit of Montana.