Awards
1997 PEN/Jerard Fund Award for a work in progress
2001 Whiting Writers Award.
Synopses & Reviews
Born into a third generation of Montana homesteaders, Judy Blunt learned early how to rope and ride and jockey a John Deere, but also to bake bread and can vegetables and reserve my opinion when the men were talking. The lessons carried her through thirty-six-hour blizzards, devastating prairie fires and a period of extreme isolation that once threatened the life of her infant daughter. But though she strengthened her survival skills in what was and is essentially a mans world, Blunts story is ultimately that of a woman who must redefine herself in order to stay in the place she loves.
Breaking Clean is at once informed by the myths of the West and powerful enough to break them down. Against formidable odds, Blunt has found a voice original enough to be called classic.
Review
"A memoir with the fierce narrative force of an eastern Montana blizzard, rich in story and character, filled with the bone-chilling details of Blunts childhood. She writes without bitterness, with an abiding love of the land and the work and her family and friends that she finally left behind, at great sacrifice, to begin to write. This is a magnificent achievement, a book for the ages. Ive never read anything that compares with it." James Crumley, author of The Last Good Kiss
Review
"Blunt's attention to detail and dry humor make this debut emboldening. Her writing inspires respect for rural life and its 'intimacy born of isolation, rather than blood relation.'" Publishers Weekly, *starred* review
Review
"A remarkable literary achievement. It is destined to be a classic in the
literature of Western women; excerpts should end up in school anthologies
for their brilliant evocation of blizzards and one-room schools." Sandra
Scofield, The Oregonian
Review
"[Blunt] dissolves the romantic myths that shroud what is in fact a perpetually embattled way of life, one she both reveres and reviles. Hopefully, Blunt will keep honig her keen and poetic awareness, steely candor, and commanding storytelling skills and continue telling the true story of women in the West." Booklist
Review
"[An] astonishing literary debut, a dramatic and heartbreaking memoir...honed from difficult circumstances and crackling with energy long pent up...Having prevailed over a life of extreme isolation, Blunt manages to escape with poetry and feeling intact, singularly able to relive, with both aching honesty and occasional joy, a fascinating, ferocious coming of age." Elle
Review
"In its precise, arresting descriptions of a working farm and its careful re-creation of how Blunt ultimately came to break free, this masterful debut is utterly strange, suspenseful and surprising a story whose threads connecting past and present are as transparent as cobwebs but as strong as barbed wire." Time Out New York
Review
"Blunt is, to put it another way, scarily good so right on, so focused, so in-your-face that you have to take the book slowly to cushion the blow....She writes without remorse, without flinching, striking matches off the scuffed soles of her feelings. When a writer can do that make it real and make it matter the world comes almost painfully alive."
National Geographic Adventure
Review
"No biographical sketch of Blunt can convey the depth of this literary achievement....Inheriting the literary territory previously claimed by Ingalls Wilder and Cather, Blunt (who's just been named a Whiting Writers' Award recipient) builds on their accomplishments, yet marks American literature in her own way. To shoehorn this into mere category or classification is to insult its power. Profound, and profoundly moving." Kirkus Reviews, *starred* review
Review
"What makes Blunt's book different from anything I've ever read about the West is the delicate eloquence with which she captures the cost of these hard lives on people's souls....Judy Blunt is such a natural writer and this book is so good, it's unthinkable to imagine that she might have never pursued this craft." Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Judy Blunt spent more than thirty years on wheat and cattle ranches in northeastern Montana, before leaving in 1986 to attend the University of Montana. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is the recipient of a Jacob K. Javits Graduate Fellowship and a Montana Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. She lives in Missoula, Montana.