When I drove across Montana, the landscape lingered long after I crossed the border. Elegant and gritty; it is a country requiring hard work. Even with towering trees, and grass up to my knees, I was always aware that underneath all the growth was rock; the edges were softened only on the surface. I could never crack the crust.

Smith Henderson captures this hardness in his debut novel, Fourth of July Creek. His characters are as pitted and solid as the ground they walk, broken along fault lines difficult to map. Henderson plumbs human dysfunction, measuring not only what makes us fail, but how we succeed; what we overcome in order to accomplish seemingly mundane things.

The novel follows Pete, a social worker with troubles of his own—divorced, missing daughter, borderline alcoholism—and the families he tries to help. His job takes him to the edges of human experience, to what we are all capable of. Kindness and gentleness spring from surprising hosts; violence and hate roil under the surface of us all.

The cop flicked his cigarette to the dirt and gravel road in front of the house, and touched back his hat over his hairline as the social worker drove up in a dusty Toyota Corolla. Through the dirty window, he spotted some blond hair falling, and he hiked in his gut, hoping that the woman in there would be something to have a look at. Which is to say he did not expect what got out: a guy in his late twenties, maybe thirty, pulling on a denim coat against the cold morning air blowing down the mountain, ducking back in to the car for a moment, reemerging with paperwork. His brown corduroy pants faded out over his skinny ass, the knees too. He pulled that long hair behind his ears with his free hand and sauntered over.

Henderson captures the spirit of the West in Fourth of July Creek. A land uninhibited by its human residents, a spirit unbridled, an unbroken horizon that gives human struggles their proper scope. But under Henderson’s deft hand, a sensitivity to the human condition pulls to the surface. Hope does prevail; a small dose is often enough.

Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite novelists, is credited with a tidy 8-item list for would-be fiction writers. Number two is simply, ”Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.” Sounds reasonable enough. But then, in item six, writers are commanded to be “sadists” and “make awful things happen” to the character whom we readers are supposed to pull for.

Smith Henderson must have been paying attention to Vonnegut when working on his debut novel Fourth of July Creek. Set in rural Montana, the novel follows Pete Snow, a social worker who rescues children from abusive and dysfunctional families and accidentally stumbles across Benjamin Pearl, son of paranoid homesteader Jeremiah. We like Pete. He does good work, despite the fact that he himself is broken. He gets kids out of dangerous houses with drug-dealing parents. He slowly gains the trust of Jeremiah Pearl, whose paranoid delusions forced him and his family into the wilderness, eventually sharing much-needed medicine and food with them. Pete does this all while in the background, his personal life is falling apart: his brother is in trouble with the law; his crumbled marriage threatens his relationship with his daughter; the interactions with his dad are too complicated to summarize. These bad things boost Pete’s “good-guy” credibility with us.

But then, we don’t like him, too. He slugs a client in the stomach. He admits to alcoholism but does nothing to correct himself, and his drinking often flings him into violent blackouts. He’s a bit of a misogynist.

The complexity of the book’s main character is just one of the highlights, though. The rest of the cast is just as delightful in their varying degrees of dysfunction and likability. They are all quite real. My mom is a retired social worker and, while she never punched a client (to my knowledge) I can assure you that the crazy people Pete encounters do honestly exist in real life. All of these characters are presented to us through Henderson’s lively prose, which allows us to follow several sub-plots at once without getting confused.

It might sound like a bleak book, but it’s not. Without spoiling the plot, I can assure you that Fourth of July Creek is suffused with hope, stubborn and fleeting it may seem at times. Pick up a copy and see for yourself.

Smith Henderson will be at Lemuria signing Fourth of July Creek on Wednesday, July 16 at 5:00.

When we first read The Dog Stars in 2012, we were fired up for Heller’s unique style–sparse prose, wide landscapes, and characters that seem more comfortable in the natural world then they do in company. Here was a book for all of us itching to just get away for awhile.

Well, Peter Heller is BACK. And not only has he written another lovely novel, he’s coming back to Lemuria (and  as our FEC pick for May) June 10th at 5 PM.

We love first novels; it’s a chance for us to meet someone new, to go to a place nobody has written us into yet. Second novels are a bit trickier to pull off. Peter Heller has done a bang up job; The Painter is a bit of Dostoyevsky and a bit of Hemingway.

“I never imagined I would shoot a man. Or be a father. Or live so far from the sea.

As a child, you imagine your life sometimes, how it will be.”

And so we are off with a gunshot. Jim Stegner, the novel’s protagonist splits his time between Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico. He is a painter, but he is also a fly-fisherman. This division is Stegner’s strength and flaw–he paints in a fury as untamable as his temper and fishes with the patience of a monk.

We never do see the artwork Jim Stegner paints. Each chapter is headed with a placard of the work that makes an appearance in each chapter:

I’m pleased that we don’t see the paintings. Something would be stolen from us. Peter Heller works well with the negative space of the story–sometimes what isn’t shown is just as important as what is. Like Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov, Jim Stegner can’t help but give himself away when his inner turmoil works its way onto the canvas.

John Ashbery wrote a poem titled “The Painter.” I happened to read it while I was reading Peter Heller’s The Painter. The two share a similar spirit–the artist at odds with the world around him (and inside him):

by Kelly Pickerill

We are so excited to have two amazing authors coming to the store on March 27 at 5:00!

Lorrie Moore, winner of the O’Henry award and an old favorite of ours, will be here to read from and sign her new collection of short stories, Bark.

Joining her will be Susan Minot (also an O’Henry award winner!) for her new novel, Thirty Girls. Both of these talented women are old friends of the bookstore and we think so highly of their work that we have chosen these two books to be our February and March First Editions Club picks.

We want to make this event a real party, so if you chose any event to attend this season, let this be the one! Keep your eyes peeled for more posts and updates about the event, because I have a feeling it’s only going to get more exciting. We’d love for you to join us in a giant hangout session with these two amazing ladies. Mark it on your calendars!