Pioneer big-wave surfer, Greg Noll, was called Da Bull by his fellow surfers for his stubborn, straightforward and aggressive approach to the sport. His approach to life in general wasn't much different. His life revolved around surfing and everything the sport engendered. He made surfboards and surf films. He pioneered modern surfing in Australia. He discovered Mazatlan as a surf spot. He as the first to ride the fear-some waves at Waimea Bay and Outside Pipeline on Oahu's North Shore. He brawled and caroused with men, charmed and entertained women.Above all, he was Da Bull, one of the bravest and best of the big wave riders of his or anyone's era. Part of Greg Noll's motivation for riding big surf came from the camaraderie he enjoyed with his elite and rowdy peers. The other part came from with: "I just wanted to ride a bigger wave than anybody. I wanted to do something none of the other guys could or would do." One day in December 1969, he did just that when a storm from the Aleutians drove monstrous swells onto the shores of Oahu and created a day like no other at Makaha Point. There, Greg Noll met the wave that had beckoned but eluded him for twenty years. Hawaii State Senator and former World Surfing Champion, Fred Hemmings, was out in the water at Makaha that same day. Afterward, he described Greg Noll's experience as "a death-wish wave. If it had been anyone else in that situation, he would have died

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

Bangtail Press

When Montana Territory was established in 1864, it was a land of tepees and ramshackle cabins, of lawless vigilantes and miners scraping out meager livings. One hundred and fifty years later, the dramatic changes to the Treasure State are overshadowed only by the startling similarities. On the occasion of Montana's 150th territorial anniversary, and with a perspective born from a lifetime's devotion to the history of his home state, author Aaron Parrett compares where we started with where we are today, and along the way shows us a Montana we never could have previously imagined. "In the tradition of Joseph Kinsey Howard and K. Ross Toole, Aaron Parrett interrogates Montana as both place and idea, revealing that what has long distinguished the state-robust island communities surrounded by a sea of redemptive space-has largely survived." Edwin Dobb U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism "Aaron Parrett has told Montana's story entertainingly without shying from the darker bits. The result is a romp through our state's history that is at once lighthearted and intelligent." Molly Holz Editor, Montana The Magazine of Western History "Aaron Parret's Montana: Then and Now stitches together the tapestry that is Montana's 150-year-long history with the perspective born of years of sincere appreciation and study. This account gives us pause and at the same time gives us hope, that Montana's next generation realizes its role in preserving the unique qualities inherent in the 'last best place.'" Stephanie Ambrose Tubbs Why Sacagawea Deserves the Day Off and Other Lessons of the Lewis and Clark Trail

Montana: Then and Now

History

Parrett, Aaron

Americas

A Fact & Fiction Reader

Malcolm Brooks

A recently-widowed doctor, stunned by grief, retreats to a cabin on Montana's Rocky Mountain Front. Inside she has a puppy and a stack of letters from an old lover. Outside, there's a bear. As she revisits the letters from Tom Connor, we come to see, through his eyes, the dusty, broken alleys of Central America during the war years. The two narratives taken together explore themes of life-long love, about what we can see only when we are ready to see, and how hope can grow in the darkest of places. The third in what the author sees as his "homecoming trilogy" (after Hunger in American and Ben Armstrong's Strange Trip Home), Tom Connor's Gift shines a light on the transformative act of storytelling itself, and is destined to be received as one of the most important novels of the year. 
David Allan Cates's Tom Connor's Gift is extraordinary. The prose is ravishing, the characters are surprising and irresistible, and many of its scenes are so intensely moving that they bring tears of gratitude and pleasure. The book praises long marriage and long friendship, but what I especially appreciate about its vision is how sexually liberating it is for both men and women. Cates is a fierce and fearless writer! One finishes this novel feeling wiser, more alive, and spiritually refreshed. David Huddle 
Sadness and madness, grief and delirium. Tom Connor's Gift delivers us precious monsters: our first true love and our true lasting love. Coursing between anecdote and musing, this is a novel only grownups can understand. It is smart and ecstatic and will break your goddamn heart. Bryan Di Salvatore 
David Allan Cates evokes the human heart out of the landscape, blending the two with so much subtlety and skill that the very world in this novel shimmers with yearning. Tom Connor is as complex and fascinating a character as I have read in contemporary fiction, and Cates has an uncanny ability to evoke the beautiful and terrifying, the feverish and gritty Central American world Connor travels through. Tom Connor's Gift is a journey into the heart of two continents-and the continent of the human heart-an exploration of dissolution and loyalty, naiveté and cynicism, grief and renewal. In this novel, they all find their place. Kent Myers 
Tom Connor's Gift is the gift we all seek, the gift of love in the face of grief, violence, loss, and heartbreak. In a deeply felt and vividly told story, David Cates connects the interior lives of a farm woman in the wilderness grieving her husband's death and her long-lost lover-a wandering man torn by the beauties and terrors of Central America. Annick Smith 
Tom Connor's Gift is a fearless and instructive odyssey into the rustic places of the heart that still baffle and dictate our lives. Rick DeMarinis 
Tom Connor's Gift is a gift all right-hilarious and moving-a two for one: two voices, two stories, two struggles to come to terms with love and longing, in prose that is vivid, urgent, brave, and true. Dinah Lenney 
Put a widow in a cabin at the edge of Montana's Rocky Mountain Front with nothing but memories and a marauding bear outside to keep her company and what do you get? A tenderly-told tale of grief, recovery, and a message of love from the past. David Allan Cates's Tom Connor's Gift is indeed a gift to readers looking for a novel that will ask them to slow down and think about questions like "How do we endure suffering? And how-when life has flung us far and wide-how do we get home again?" David Abrams 
Tom Connor's Gift is a wonderful book, standing on its tiptoes, stretching out its fingers to brush against a magical realism that is transformative. Mark Metcalf

Tom Connor's Gift

Literature & Fiction

Cates, David Allan

Contemporary

Illegal immigration and drug smuggling, corporate polluters and tragic affairs of the heart. On the border country between Mexico and the United States, literature can barely keep up with the bad news. An exception is the new novel from Rick DeMarinis, "El Paso Twilight." A study of political manners and debauchery masquerading as pulp fiction, DeMarinis shows us a world inhabited by the likes of Luther Penrose, a 290-pound, drug-dependent novelist with marital fidelity problems, and Luther's old army buddy, J.P. Morgan, an insurance fraud investigator who has reluctantly agreed to lend his friend a hand. Given the tumultuous, bloody, and unpredictable events that follow, it's a decision that Morgan will come to ruefully regret. With wry humor and scalpel-sharp sensibilities, "El Paso Twilight" marks a splendid return to form from one of most applauded authors in the American West.

El Paso Twilight

DeMARINIS, Rick

Literary

The third in a trilogy of collected pieces of reportorial nonfiction, personal essays, and profiles from Toby Thompson, Fired On joins Thompson's Riding the Rough String and Metroliner in charting one of the most respected careers in American letters. For more than forty years, Thompson has been preoccupied with western art and those who create it. From early works by Carl Bodmer, Paul Kane, Charles M. Russell and Fredrick Remington to modern masters like Russell Chatham and T.C. Cannon, in Fired On Thompson considers three centuries' worth of art across western America. In the process and in aggregate, he finally paints a larger portrait of the place and its inhabitants. This anthology includes pieces previously published as well as essays written specifically for this collection.

Fired On: Targeting Western American Art

Arts & Photography

Thompson, Toby

History & Criticism

From the self-anointed, one-n-only Polish-Mafioso-Rodeo-Poet of Manchester, Montana, this handpicked selection of "lite encounters of the otherworldly kind" includes fan favorites "The Tumbleweed Munchies," "Long Sagebrush Drives," "Why I Like BUTTE!" and "The Whale in My Wallet." In addition, Steering With My Knees offers over forty never-before-seen-in-print predestined "classics."

Steering with My Knees

Zarzyski, Paul

Poetry

Over the course of a long and distinguished career, the bronze art of Burl A. Jones has been seen on the grounds of state capitols and the lawns of college campuses, in the halls of dignitaries and the trophy rooms of entrepreneurs. But behind the art, inspiring it and informing it with a unique authenticity, stands a life of the kind that is rarely seen today. From stalking whitetails in West Virginia to chasing Cape buffalo in Mozambique, the artist's urge to create has been fueled largely by his love for hunting and the outdoors. Compelling, heartwarming, and compulsively readable, From Dawn until Dusk gives us an account, in the artist's own words, of the seminal events that shaped him as a sportsman, husband, father, friend, and artist.

From Dawn Until Dusk

Jones, Burl A.

Sculpture

There are so few writers who can make us smile even as they're breaking our hearts. With 51, his first book in more than six years, Paul Zarzyski gives us not only 30 of his finest poems but also the lyrics to 20 songs co-written with the likes of Ian Tyson, Tom Russell, and Wylie Gustafson. And with 1 brilliant self-interview, he shows us what shaped him as an author and artist, performer and poet. Personal and profound, 51 is destined to be seen as one of the new decade's most important contributions to the literature of the West.

51: 30 Poems, 20 Lyrics, 1 Self-Interview

Known to American audiences primarily through his music, singer-songwriter Tom Russell is every bit as talented on the canvas as he is the page, just as devoted to exploring his chosen art form when there s a brush in his hand as a guitar. And so it's perhaps no surprise that the same sensibilities that enliven and inform his music -- the passion and compassion, his sense of western history and rich feel for his own context -- are also tangibly on display on his canvases.  Through the course of presenting more than sixty of Russell's finest paintings, Blue Horse, Red Desert spans some of the most productive years of his artistic career. We see the whimsical humor of such pieces as Free Range Chickens Crossing the Rio Grande; we share in his sense of historical umbrage with Custer's Last Stand and Juarez / Guernica, and we appreciate the sharp, intellectual awareness of his predecessors in homages to Fritz Scholder and Edward S. Curtis.  With a brilliant biographical introduction by Russell and complemented by an afterword by masterful author Paul Zarzyski, Blue Horse, Red Desert is destined to be seen as a milestone in the blooming career of a true American master.

Blue Horse, Red Desert: The Art of Tom Russell

Tom Russell

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