S.M. Hulse and Maxim Loskutoff will appear live on Crowdcast to discuss their novels Eden Mine and Ruthie Fear with UW Professor Ron Kuka. Before the event begins, you will see a countdown and the event image.

About Eden Mine: For generations, the Fabers have lived near Eden Mine, scraping by to keep ahold of their family's piece of Montana. Jo and her brother, Samuel, will be the last. Despite a long battle, their property has been seized by the state through eminent domain?something Samuel deems a government theft. As Jo packs, she hears news of a bombing. Samuel went off to find work in Wyoming that morning, but soon enough, it's clear that he's not gone but missing, last seen by a security camera near the district courthouse?now a crime scene?in Elk Fork. And the nine-year-old daughter of a pastor at a nearby church lies in critical condition. Can the person Jo loves and trusts most have done this terrible thing? Can she have missed the signs? The last time their family met violence, Jo lost her ability to walk. Samuel took care of her, outfitted their barn with special rigging so she could still ride their mule. What secrets has he been keeping? As Jo watches the pastor fight for his daughter, watches the authorities hunt down a criminal, she wrestles with an impossible choice: Must she tell them where Samuel might be? Must she choose between loyalty and justice? Between the brother she knows and the man he has become? A timely story of the tensions splintering families and communities all over this country, S.M. Hulse's Eden Mine is also a steady-eyed gaze into the ideals of the West and the legacies of violence, a moving account of faith in the face of evil, and a heartrending reckoning of the terrible choices we make for the ones we love.

About Ruthie Fear: In Ruthie Fear a young woman faces the violent past of a remote Montana valley. A sparkling debut work of fiction, this haunting parable of the American west is a story of environmental destruction, and recapturing the delicate balance we hold with nature. As a child in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, Ruthie Fear sees an apparition: a strange, headless creature near a canyon creek. Its presence haunts her throughout her youth. Raised in a trailer by her stubborn, bowhunting father, Ruthie develops a powerful connection with the natural world but struggles to find her place in a society shaped by men. Development, gun violence, and her father’s vendettas threaten her mountain home. As she comes of age, her small community begins to fracture in the face of class tension and encroaching natural disaster, and the creature she saw long ago reappears as a portent of the valley’s final reckoning. An entirely new kind of western and the first novel from one of this generation’s most wildly imaginative writers, Ruthie Fear captures the destruction and rebirth of the modern American West with warmth, urgency, and grandeur. The technicolor bursts of action that test Ruthie’s commitment to the valley and its people invite us to look closer at our nation’s complicated legacy of manifest destiny, mass shootings, and environmental destruction. Anchored by its unforgettable heroine, Ruthie Fear presents the rural West as a place balanced on a knife-edge, at war with itself, but still unbearably beautiful and full of love.

Eden Mine & Ruthie Fear