Why am I passionate about this?

I am a son of the contemporary American Westā€”born near the Pacific Coast, raised in Texas, and an inveterate traveler of its byways and odd corners. Through the duality of my upbringing, as the son of a well-traveled mother, a suburban sportswriter stepfather, and a father who worked in extractive industries, Iā€™ve seen up close both harmony and dissonance. The work Iā€™m drawn to, whether on the creation end or the consumptive end, goes deep into the lives that play out in these places.


I wrote

And It Will Be A Beautiful Life

By Craig Lancaster,

Book cover of And It Will Be A Beautiful Life

What is my book about?

This book follows a traveling pipeline inspector who has lost the thread of his life.

Max Wendt's work has takenā€¦

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of A Bloom Of Bones

Craig Lancaster Why did I love this book?

Allen Morris Jones writes with such grace, humility, and empathy that I just knew, from the earliest paragraphs, that Iā€™d follow him wherever he wanted to go with this one.

I like stories, whether on the page, on film, or in the oral tradition, in which the answers arenā€™t easy, and Jones obliges. This story of a hardscrabble Montana poet who witnessed something horrible as a child and searches for a way to live with it as an adult moved me in a deep and still way.

Itā€™s one of those books I finished, set quietly down, and thought about for days afterward. The thinking about it persists years later.

By Allen Morris Jones,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Bloom Of Bones as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Eli Singer, a rancher and poet in remote Eastern Montana, sees his life upended when a long-buried corpseĀ—which turns out to be a murder victim from Eli's childhoodĀ—erodes out of a hillside on his property. This discovery forces Eli to turn inward to revisit the tragic events in his past that led to a life-changing moment of violence, while at the same time he must reach outside himself toward Chloe, a literary agent from New York whom he is falling in love with. In the tradition of such classic western writers as Thomas McGuane, James Lee Burke, Ivan Doig andā€¦


Book cover of One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large

Craig Lancaster Why did I love this book?

Sometimes the compelling central character of a book is the author. So it is with this one, by the current poet laureate of Montana. Page after page, I was mesmerized by what La Tray could weave out of a single, seemingly simple thought that, it turned out, contained galaxies of complexity and nuance.

I think La Tray is a true original in Western letters, a man of deep conviction, conscience, humor, righteousness, and love. His talents are on full display here.

By Chris La Tray, Mara Panich (illustrator), Daniel J Rice (editor)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked One-Sentence Journal as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

FROM THE 2023 MONTANA POET LAUREATE...

Winner of the 2018 Montana Book Award

and the 2019 High Plains Book Award


"La Tray is a perimeter man, seeing the reality in wildness yet dealing the best he can at rec onciling truth in nature." - Barry Babcock author of Teachers in the Forest


This book is a collection of poems and essays from the writer's experiences of travelling through landscapes both wild and civilized. They speak with delicate simplicities ranging from the death of a favorite pickup truck, to the joy of hitting the trail with a four-legged companion. There areā€¦


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Book cover of Fourteen

Fourteen by Leslie Johansen Nack,

Fourteen is a coming-of-age adventure when, at the age of 14, Leslie and her two sisters have to batten down the hatches on their 45-foot sailboat to navigate the Pacific Ocean and French Polynesia, as well as the stormy temper of their larger-than-life Norwegian father.

Book cover of Crazy Mountain

Craig Lancaster Why did I love this book?

I think itā€™s easy to live on the fault lines of conflict in the West today and be judgmental about whoā€™s right and whoā€™s wrong. What I love about Elise Atchisonā€™s debut novel is that she avoids those binaries and instead tells the story of a changing Western town through the lens of the land, which bears the transformationsā€”for good or for illā€”but also has its own say.

I think Atchison smartly, instinctively employs an excellent piece of writing advice: A good antagonist thinks he/she is the protagonist.

Book cover of True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America

Craig Lancaster Why did I love this book?

Here, I veer off into nonfiction, but only because nobody would believe any novelist who conjured up the likes of the real-life people Betsy Gaines Quammen talks to in constructing this portrait of how things got so fraught out West.

In my view, it takes a writer of particular skill and empathy to honestly get at the thoughts and motivations of folks with whom she likely disagrees on fundamental questions. Further, it takes a writer of inherent fairness to call balls and strikes on all sides of contentious issues. Quammen, for my money, is such a writer.

By Betsy Gaines Quammen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked True West as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

ā€œTrue West disentangles reality from centuries of myth and mystique."

ā€”HAMPTON SIDES, New York Times bestselling author of Blood and Thunder


From the Northern Rockies to the Southwest deserts, Betsy Gaines Quammen explores how myths shape our identities, heighten polarizations, and fracture our shared understanding of the world around us. As she investigates the origins and effects of myths of the American West, Gaines Quammen travels through small towns and big cities, engaging people and building relationships at every stop. Misperceptions about land, politics, liberty, and self-determination threaten the well-being of people and communities across the country, and Gaines Quammenā€¦


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Book cover of Doctors at War: The Clandestine Battle against the Nazi Occupation of France

Doctors at War by Ellen Hampton,

Doctors at War: The Clandestine Battle against the Nazi Occupation of France takes readers into the moral labyrinth of the Occupation years, 1940-45, to examine how the medical community dealt with the evil authority imposed on them. Anti-Jewish laws prevented many doctors from practicing, inspiring many to form secret medicalā€¦

Book cover of Let the Wild Grasses Grow

Craig Lancaster Why did I love this book?

I was utterly awed by Kase Johnstunā€™s boundless love for the characters in this novel, which I learned later was informed by memories of and letters by his grandparents.

It overflows with some of my favorite things about the literature that most often resonates with me: When an author of great skill can mine memory and history, spend time with it, apply the transformative agent of imagination, and emerge into the world with work laden with genuineness.

I find Johnstunā€™s work to be imbued with love, which he marries to considerable storytelling chops. Heā€™s a writer more people should know about, so itā€™s become a bit of a mission of mine to shout his name.

By Kase Johnstun,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Let the Wild Grasses Grow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Beautiful and expansiveā€¦in Johnstun's Let the Wild Grasses Grow, Colorado has a successor to Kent Haruf."
ā€”SEAN PRENTISS, author of Finding Abbey

Let the Wild Grasses Grow chronicles the lives of Della Chavez and John Cordova, childhood friends separated by a tragic accident, who find each other again during World War II after leading separate lives of struggle through the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and, for John, abuse at the hands of his grandfather. This sweeping American love story celebrates the power of home landscapes, family heritage, and first love.


Explore my book šŸ˜€

And It Will Be A Beautiful Life

By Craig Lancaster,

Book cover of And It Will Be A Beautiful Life

What is my book about?

This book follows a traveling pipeline inspector who has lost the thread of his life.

Max Wendt's work has taken him away from his wife and his grown daughter and put him on a path toward ruin that he doesn't even realize he's traveling. In the course of an extraordinary month-plus, he loses almost everythingā€”and gains friendships and perspective that might just sustain him as he tries to recover from his self-inflicted losses.

Book cover of A Bloom Of Bones
Book cover of One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large
Book cover of Crazy Mountain

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