Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A • S P R I N G 2 0 1 7 56 KEITH McCAFFERTY Keith McCafferty is the survival editor of Field & Stream and the author of five Sean Stranahan novels including Crazy Mountain Kiss, which won the Western Writers of America 2016 Spur Award for Best Western Contemporary Novel, and the highly recommended Buffalo Jump Blues. His sixth novel, COLD HEARTED RIVER, will be published by Viking/ Penguin Books in July, 2017. He lives with his wife, cat, and, as a wild bird rescue volunteer, various feathered friends, in southwest Montana. For more see www. keithmccafferty.com JAMIE HARRISON Jamie Harrison, who has lived in Montana for 30 years, has worked as a writer, caterer, and as a technical editor for archaeological and biological reports. Her new novel, e Widow Nash, is due out from Counterpoint Press in June; her mystery novels include e Edge of the Crazies, Going Local, An Unfortunate Prairie Occurrence, and BLUE DEER THAW. Find her on Facebook. Another prolific mystery writer is Livingston's PETER BOWEN who has written 15 novels starring Gabriel Du Pré, a Metis problem solver, and five historical novels. See more about them at www. peterbowenmt.com. Other writers of series: Lise McClendon Leslie Budewitz Christine Carbo William "Gatz" Hortsberg And then there are those authors, such as popular James Crumley and A.B. Guthrie who are no longer alive. Your librarian or bookstore salesperson can always help you. EXCERPT FROM COLD HEARTED RIVER: It had started the night before, when the snow sifted down onto the carcass of his horse and there was no sound beyond the intermit- tent release of its gases and no stars to wish upon. at's when he began to "What if " it to death, going back to the morning, kissing her face and feeling the flutter of her eyelashes that, as he'd helped her from the saddle only a couple hours later, a small woman made smaller by the immensity of the country and the fourteen hands of her horse, were already icycling with frost. EXCERPT FROM BLUE DEER THAW: In Absaroka County, people were always disappearing, freezing to death in the winter, falling and drowning in the summer, forc- ing others to go into inhospitable corners of God's country after them and risk their own toes and minds. Not many American sheriffs had to devote such an appreciable chunk of their budget to finding idiots with a poor sense of direction, and though not everyone who went missing deserved their fate, most did. Search and Rescue spent the season searching for lost horn hunters and other fatuous men of the woods, dug for days in avalanche areas for drunken yodelers, scraped the rivers and lakes for happy fools who died panicked, horrible deaths. A dry line in the newspaper, something about a hiker having been "partially consumed" by a grizzly, was a whisper compared to the real scream of the sight itself. When you spent an afternoon crawling around in search of bits of scalp and gristle it made no difference if the bear had killed the hunter outright or been cleaning up a mess left after an accident. It made no difference that Jules, all in all, preferred the bears. Some of the hikers probably had, too. Hear James Lee Burke read from his book: www.distinctlymontana.com/burke172 DISTINCTLY MONTANA | DIGITAL

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