Join us on Friday, September 2nd, at 7 PM for a reading and book signing with author Elise Atchison from her recent novel CRAZY MOUNTAIN.
CRAZY MOUNTAIN chronicles a rapidly changing place and community through the diverse and conflicting stories of the people who live in a fictional mountain valley in Montana over nearly half a century (1970-2015). As newly built roadscarve through the primal wild, and the rural landscape transforms into subdivisions and McMansions and resorts, conflicts escalate between locals and newcomers, developers and environmentalists, the wealthy and the homeless. Through multiple perspectives we hear the voices of ranchers, real estate agents, carpenters, artists, New Agers, Native American activists, landscapers, movie stars, musicians, pizza delivery drivers, gun-toting fundamentalists, and others including Kate, a troubled young woman who becomes homeless over the course of the book and whose own story in many ways mirrors the destruction and resurrection of the land. These varied threads weave together into a rich tapestry of place, exploring timely themes of housing booms and homelessness, loss of open land to development, cultural clashes, and the correlation between how we treat the natural world and how we treat each other, especially the most vulnerable among us. What does it mean
to lose a place we love, and what does it mean to gain from it? Perhaps it depends on perspective.
About the author: Elise Atchison has lived most of her life in an off-the-grid home on the edge of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness in Montana. Her novel, Crazy Mountain, was published by Sowilo Press in 2022. Atchison is the recipient of the Eludia Book Award, Barbara Deming Award, Montana Arts Council Artist’s Grant, and she has been a finalist for many other awards. Her short stories and essays have appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, radio, and elsewhere. More info at www.eliseatchison.com.
