The Harrows: A Novel of the American Century

With The Harrows, Matt Pavelich offers us a third splendid novel-this one, a true family saga of the American West. The Harrows tells its multigenerational story with great wisdom, heart, and (often hilarious) humor.

The novel begins at the start of the 20^th century with Charlie Harrow, erstwhile freighter, and his beloved Dove, schoolmarm and homesteader in her own right, establishing the family farm on Montana's fabled Square Butte Bench, a "place of taunting, receding horizons." The novel ends on the same place, with the return of a great-granddaughter intent, unaccountably, on continuing the family operation.

While one member of each generation stays on, and makes the place thrive, others travel far afield, to the killing fields of World War Two, to drug-running adventures off the coast of Morocco, to the jazz clubs of Great Falls and Los Angeles, to military drudgery and tragedy on Okinawa during the Vietnam conflict, to the quiet bookish neighborhoods of Portland.

The intertwining stories of these remarkable Harrows-Charlie and Dove, George and Verity, Tel and Jeet, Carrie and Elizabeth- tell us of a beautiful, often unforgiving place and of what it means to be family, in all our imperfections, our sorrows, and our joys.

The Harrows is a gorgeous piece of work. It seems destined to become an American classic.

-Rick Newby, author of A Regionalism That Travels: Writings on (Mostly) Montana Arts, 1975-2022

Author: Matt Pavelich
Publisher: Bar R Books
Published: 06/16/2025
Pages: 410
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.62lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.11d
ISBN: 9798218669041

About the Author
Pavelich, Matt: - Matt Pavelich was born on the Flathead Indian Reservation. He is not native American. On the ranch where he was raised, his were mostly urban interests, but country manners followed him to town and through a lengthy education that further confused the issue. He was a pacifist in the Marine Corps, then a day laborer who never successfully paired a strong back with a strong mind. He has been a bad pilot and a peculiar lawyer. He is a thrice-married bachelor. While it seems this tendency to be a poor fit has served him pretty poorly, it does have its uses for Pavelich the writer. He belongs only to his craft and the rich murk of thought and sensation he might stir with it. Standing outside, Pavelich is constantly discovering in his work how he stands there, outside, with nearly all of humanity. The attention he lavishes on the rhythm, timbre, and pace of his language was evident from his earliest published stories, Beasts of the Forest, Beasts of the Field. Pavelich uses musicality to serve up constantly shifting moods. In the novel, Our Savage, he dared to occupy as a fictionist times, situations, and personalities he might only research in his imagination; thus the story of a giant, told in naturalistic terms, making his way from the court of the Holy Roman Empire to a Wyoming coal camp. In The Other Shoe, Pavelich walks a cast of innocents painfully through his musings on justice. In Survivors Said the people of his stories do just that, survive, an often mixed blessing.For Pavelich, it seems, the purpose of life is life itself, and perhaps a song to properly sing it.Livezey, Dale: - Dale Livezey began his focused study of the Montana landscape in 1978 when, at the age of 20, he left behind the Ohio farm country where he was raised. Always an independent spirit, Dale's study in oil painting has been self-directed over the course of his decades painting. An intimate experiential knowledge of light and natural forms guides his highly color-centric compositions. Time outdoors is a key element in his approach, although paintings are largely produced in the studio.

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