In this interview with Bozeman octogenarian, Jo Anne Salisbury Troxel, recorded on Jan. 12, 2020, she recounts her life from birth in Plentywood, MT to the present in Bozeman. Her father, Rodney Salisbury, was the Communist Sheriff of Sheridan County, who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Montana. Her mother, Marie Chapman Hansen, was a journalist. Wed to other spouses, who refused to grant them divorces, they defied small town conventions to live their free love, while organizing farmers and ranchers to resist foreclosures and other inequities of “Main Street”.

Through the lens of her ancestors and her own experiences, she illuminates the way things were in Montana from the 19th century to the present.