Synopses & Reviews
Montana, 1968: The small town of Paradise Valley is ripped open when popular rancher and notorious bachelor Tom Butcher is found murdered one morning, beaten to death by a baseball bat. Suspicion among the tight-knit community immediately falls on the outsider, Carl Logan, who recently moved in with his family and his troubled son Roger. What Carl doesn't realize is that there are plenty of people in Paradise Valley who have reason to kill Tom Butcher.
Complications arise when the investigating officers discover that Tom Butcher had a secret — a secret he kept even from Junior Kirby, a lifelong rancher and Butcher's best friend. As accusations fly and secrets are revealed one after another, the people of Paradise Valley learn how deeply Tom Butcher was embedded in their lives, and that they may not have known him at all.
With familiar mastery, Russell Rowland, the author of In Open Spaces and Fifty-Six Counties, returns to rural Montana to explore a small town torn apart by secrets and suspicions, and how the tenuous bonds of friendship struggle to hold against the differences that would sever us.
Review
"Years ago, I wrote that Russell Rowland was like a cross between Richard Ford and John Irving. I hereby revise that opinion. He's better. He's warmer, more relaxed — and also more alert to the tensions between people." Kris Saknussemm, author of Private Midnight and Reverend America
Review
"Cold Country is remarkable in many respects, perhaps chiefly in the way Russell Rowland finds extraordinary drama in ordinary lives."
Larry Watson, author of Montana 1948 and Let Him Go
Review
"As [Rowland] digs deep into the hearts of his characters, we recognize our own tangled relationships, the burden of the secrets we keep, our own prejudices, our fears of being alone, unloved, or unwanted. Like the land he writes about, this book will leave you humbled, wrestling, and in awe." Susan Henderson, author of Up from the Blue and Flicker of Old Dreams
About the Author
Russell Rowland was born in Bozeman, MT in 1957. He has an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University. The Difference Between Us is his fifth novel and his seventh book. His first novel, In Open Spaces, was called "a novel of muted elegance" by the New York Times. He lives in Billings, Montana.