Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T L Y M O N T A N A M A G A Z I N E • F A L L 2 0 2 2 58 WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL, I remember standing in line at the grocery store, my head about butt-high to the world. At that level there was little to interest a small child except for candy bars and the tabloid rack. I wasn't fascinated by copies of TV Guide, Soap Opera Digest or collections of Jum- bo Crosswords, but the romance novels certainly caught my attention. I hate to date myself, but I grew up during the heyday of florid romance novel covers. Fabio accomplished the impos- sible task of peering out from the covers of most of them. Here he posed on the bow of a big wooden ship, apparently about to sniff the neck of a swooning woman. And there he would be, transmuted now into a Scottish highlander com- plete with billowing kilt, embracing another sleepy-looking woman on the edge of a craggy seaside cliff. Alongside buccaneers and highlanders came the rugged yet sensitive mountain men and pioneers in the spirit of The Last of the Mohicans' Daniel Day Lewis. An army of mul- leted men in buckskins followed in his wake. With their al- ways-ripped abs and anachronistic hairstyles, they brought the sex to the West —at least, to the West that existed in these books. What was this world, where men's shirts could never keep their pecs in check, and women's heaving bo- soms were always in danger of exploding from their bodices like a stop-valve under too much pressure? What was this world, glimpsed only in book covers, where every man's shirt had long ago yielded to the explosive force of his pectorals, and every woman's heaving bosom was stuffed into a tightly-laced bodice? If romance novels are windows into another world, then what is Montana like in that world? Or, to put it another way, if your only source of information was romance novels set there, what lessons might you take away about the Treasure State? Or, to put it yet one more way, what do half-naked cowboys, angry grizzlies, and bureaucratic red tape have in common? In the world of the Montana romance novel, ev- erything. I selected three books—Wild Montana by Danica Win- ters, Yellowstone Heart Song by Peggy L. Henderson, and Manhunting in Montana by Vicki Lewis Thompson—for the following respective reasons: Motorcycle gangs in national parks. Time travel in national parks. A quintessential Harlequin romance cover (just look up Manhunting in Montana, trust me). All three were entertaining, but this time, entertainment wasn't as important as serious reportage gleaned from care- ful reading. Everything I learned about Montana I learned from ro- mance novels. And I'm here to share it with you. 1. THAT SEMI-CLOTHED HUNK OF A COWBOY DEFINITE- LY HAD HIS HEART BROKEN BY A CITY SLICKER WHO LOOKED A LOT LIKE YOU. Here's a popular and strangely beloved misconception: when a man shoots daggers at you with his eyes, it means he loves you and would do anything for you. This happens in both Manhunting in Montana and Yellow- stone Heart Song, for remarkably similar reasons. Far be it from me to say that's outright impossible, but in my experi- ence the people who have looked at me like they hated me usually hated me. If they look at you like they hate you, they definitely don't like you. But romance novels take place in a parallel universe where interactions are predicated not on true human behavior, but on a fantasy of the same. A world where the sullen cowboy who treats you with open disdain is really just reeling from a heartbreak from which only you can heal him. And the rea- son you have this power? Because you remind him of the whip-smart, gorgeous, East Coast opportunist who broke his heart in the first place. But then the protagonists of the nov- els are often also opportunistic, gorgeous, out-of-staters too. Perhaps these cowboys have a type. If you know one, ask him. For some reason, GRIZZLY ENCOUNTERS COME OFF SEXIER THAN BRUSHES WITH OTHER WILDLIFE... JUST WATCH THAT BEAR AND LEO TUSSLE IN THE REVENANT, PROBABLY ONE OF THE AMOROUS AND INTIMATE SCENES EVER CAUGHT ON FILM.

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