A native Montanan and an acclaimed novelist (In Open Spaces, High and Inside), Russell Rowland spent the better part of two years studying and traveling around his beloved home state, from the mines of Butte to the pine forests of the Northwest, from the stark, wind-scrubbed badlands of the East to the tourist-driven economies of the mountain West. Along the way, he considered our state’s essential character, where we came from and, most of all, what we might be in the process of becoming. In this presentation he read from his newest book, Fifty-Six Counties: A Montana Journey.

Recorded at Museum of the Rockies, September 6, 2017.