Kirby Larson, Hattie Big Sky

In a few weeks, we will announce our 2008 One Book Montana choice, Kirby Larson's novel Hattie Big Sky. It was one of three Newberry Honor Books in 07 and has received a variety of other national honors and awards. It is a coming of age novel, set in the northeastern Montana of 1918, as a sixteen year old woman attempts to "prove up" on her late uncle's 320 acres of dry-land farming. It is finely written, meticulously researched, richly imagined, engaging throughout. Although it has been pitched as a YA entry and is indeed a "young woman coming of age" novel, I know of quite a few middle-aged males (including yours truly) who have found it to be an unusually rewarding book. The back-drop against which its ten-month story unfolds is WWI Montana, a place of ugly patriotic frenzy. (The good citizens of Lewistown actually burned down their brand-new high school when the superintendent refused to remove all books written by Germans). Many of the issues that Larson raises and addresses, skillfully and dramatically, alas, are still with us. We'll be pitching it in our One Book Montana program as an opportunity for intergenerational reading and discussion. Several schools already have indicated interest in school- or grade-wide student/parent reading programs around it. More information is at http://www.hattiebigsky.com/. Come to think of it, Teej, there is quite a bit more about agriculture and food in Hattie Big Sky--especially food's centrality in social matters--than in Winter Wheat. Even a few frontier recipes!