Synopsis
Everyone dreams of jumping in their car and hitting the road for parts unknown, and ultimately discovering the mysteries of the "Old West." In the summer of 1989, Barnaby Conrad did just that. For five months, he journeyed nine thousand miles through all the rough terrain of the Montana landscape in search of adventure, his family roots, and the history still breathing in the carcass of myth.
With humor and insight, Conrad encounters car-fighting cowboys, wolf biologists, modern-day mountainmen with flintlock rifles, xenophobic fly fishermen, philosophical Indians, New Age religious groups, and even grizzly bears drunk on fermented corn. Between accounts of his adventures, he pays literary homage to Montana's originals, like Charlie Russell, Will James, A. B. Guthrie, and Thomas McGuane. While traveling through such historic sites as Fort Benton and Glacier Park, Conrad revives such colorful ghosts as Calamity Jane, Butch Cassidy, General Custer, and the Sundance Kid.
GHOST HUNTING IN MONTANA provides an engaging insight into the past and present of this mystifying known as Big Sky Country. In this evocation of the old and new West, Conrad discovers not just the insider's Montana, but also the American in himself.
Reviews
A slow poke through Montana by Conrad (former editor of Horizons), a guy who likes a side dish of bile to accompany his travels. Conrad hits the road in the Big Sky State to take in the scenery and dig up a little family history. The family side of the story comes and goes--both grandfathers moved to the territory back in the late 1800s--with Conrad trying valiantly to paint them as fascinating characters. They're not, even with murder, mayhem, and adultery thrown in. Nor does Conrad succeed as an artful recorder of today's Montana. He can't help trotting out the obligatory Montaniana--barroom fisticuffs, brushes with Mr. Griz, trouty days, whiskey nights--while historical context comes in spurts from the ``Billings was named after Frederick Billings, an executive of the...'' school of background information. He mooches around with a fine disregard for the consequences, a little piece of bravery much to his credit. Most folks Conrad runs into are either forlorn, bitter, drunk, or just plain ready to brawl--bump into someone and get your lights punched out, mention the wrong name and get your lights punched out, offer an ill-timed comment and get your lights punched out. Then again, maybe he just spent too much time in bars. There is a wealth of detail in theses pages, some of it captivating, from ghoulish doings in Great Falls to the virtues of buffalo meat to tensions over wolf reintroduction to the quick portraits of the folks he crosses paths with, but little, if any, continuity. One item is cobbled to another, a pastiche from which an image of Montana never emerges. Don't expect to learn why they call this land the Last Great Place; even as a miscellany, Conrad's sidelong glimpse of Montana never conjures much excitement. (Photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Searching for family roots and adventure, Conrad, a former editor of Horizon, set out on a five-month, 9000-mile journey through the back roads of Montana. Often traveling by horse or canoe through "snow capped mountains, down her big rivers, up her box canyons, into her vast forests, across her sagebrush flats," he found true tales of the Wild West: gunfights, railroad building, prospecting, cowboys and Indians, and men confronted with grizzlies, wolves and coyotes. While native Montanans cling to their roots and look warily on newcomers, outsiders are discovering the wild beauty of this "Last Best Place," which now has its share of yuppies, artists, writers and celebrities. No mere travelogue, this is a lively and entertaining account of a little-known part of America and the colorful lives of its people. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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