THE MOUNTAIN AND THE FATHERS

The Mountain and The Fathers explores the life of boys and men in the unforgiving, harsh world north of the Bull Mountains of eastern Montana in a drought afflicted area called the Big Dry, a land that chews up old and young alike. Joe Wilkins was born into this world, raised by a young mother and elderly grandfather following the untimely death of his father. That early loss stretches out across the Big Dry, and Wilkins uses his own story and those of the young boys and men growing up around him to examine the violence, confusion, and rural poverty found in this distinctly American landscape. Ultimately, these lives put forth a new examination of myth and manhood in the American west and cast a journalistic eye on how young men seek to transcend their surroundings in the search for a better life. Rather than dwell on grief or ruin, Wilkins' memoir posits that it is our stories that sustain us, and The Mountain and The Fathers, much like the work of Norman MacClean or Jim Harrison, heralds the arrival of an instant literary classic.

Joe Wilkins is the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers: Growing up on the Big Dry (Counterpoint, 2012), and three books of poetry, Killing the Murnion Dogs (Black Lawrence Press, 2011), Notes from the Journey Westward (White Wine Press, 2012), and When We Were Birds (University of Arkansas Press, 2016), which was selected by Billy Collins for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize Series and was recently named a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. The Mountain and the Fathers, which was named a 2012 Montana Book Award Honor Book and was a 2013 Orion Book Award finalist, won the 2014 GLCA New Writers Award, an honor that has previously recognized early work by luminaries such as Alice Munro, Richard Ford, and Louise Erdrich. Of Wilkins's work, the 2014 GLCA judges note: "Joe Wilkins evokes place like Willa Cather. That is, place begins as a kind of raw, wide-open poetry. With exquisite control at both the structural and sentence level, Wilkins displays both a surety and openness to question, particularly with regard to class and masculinity without theorizing or naming them as such." A Pushcart Prize winner and National Magazine Award finalist, Wilkins has published essays, stories, and poems in a host of magazines and literary journals, including The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Harvard Review, High Country News, TriQuarterly, Ecotone, Orion, The Sun, and Slate. Wilkins lives with his wife, son, and daughter in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, where he directs the creative writing program at Linfield College.