Maxim Loskutoff in conversation with Betsy Gaines Quammen

Country Bookshelf is proud to present Maxim Loskutoff and Betsy Gaines Quammen on June 6th at 6pm. The two will explore Old King by Maxim Loskutoff. The novel explores similar themes that Betsy explores in her nonfiction writing. These two Montana authors will have a rich discussion about mythologies of the place we call home.

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Old King summary: In the summer of 1976, a heartbroken man is stranded in a remote Montana town beset by a series of strange and menacing events. He takes a job as a logger and builds a cabin on an isolated road near a reclusive neighbor—a hermit named Ted Kaczynski. The two men are fascinated by the valley’s endangered old-growth forest, but Kaczynski's violent grievances against modern society soon threaten the lives of all those around him. As Kaczynski's bombs crescendo to a devastating conclusion, , by Maxim Loskutoff wrestles with the mythologies of the wilderness, the accelerating dominion of technology, and a new kind of violence that lives next door.

Maxim Loskutoff is the award-winning author of Old King, Ruthie Fear and Come West and See. His stories and essays have appeared in numerous periodicals, including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Ploughshares, and GQ. He lives in the Rocky Mountains of western Montana.

When Ted Kaczynski was captured in a one-room cabin outside the tiny town of Lincoln, Maxim Loskutoff’s home state was suddenly thrust into the national spotlight. The two-decade manhunt for the Unabomber had become a national obsession. A palpable fear surrounded the US mail. As a seventh grader at the time, Loskutoff realized that something in the Montana woods could forever change how we think about America. It validated everything he suspected as a child: there were monsters in the dark, secrets hiding in abandoned cabins, and a mysterious volition to the trees.

Betsy Gaines Quammen is a historian and writer. She received a PhD from Montana State University where she studied religion, history and the philosophy of science. Her dissertation focused on Mormon history and the roots of armed public land conflicts occurring in the United States. She is fascinated at how religious views shape relationships to landscape. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Daily News, and the History News Network. She is the author of American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God, and Public Lands in the West and True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America. Betsy lives in Montana with her husband, writer David Quammen, three giant dogs, a sturdy cat, and a lanky rescue python.

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