Introduction by Judy Blunt, author of Breaking Clean

Afterword by David Long

For over 40 years, David Long has been Montana's best-kept literary secret, a writer's writer admired by the likes of Louise Erdrich, William Kittredge, and Billy Collins. His precise, carefully detailed stories provide a peerless record of the lives of quiet people and rural towns of Montana throughout the 20th century. His men and women know the power of the wilderness that hovers just down the road, that looms on the horizon, that constantly reminds them how small and fragile their lives are.

The Montana Stories collects David Long's best stories set in Montana from across his career, from "The Flood of '64" to "Pie Social," written for this book. It superbly demonstrates his unique talent for getting inside his characters in a manner that illuminates but never exploits, that reveals their secrets while guarding their dignity. His prose is meticulous but never so muted that the reader is not astonished in each story by a phrase or observation that rings like a well-aimed strike of an axe.

"David Long has a special talent for pulling taut the narrative thread. In these pages, we have the satisfaction of encountering a remarkable voice." — Louise Erdrich

"Long writes like a man who never hurries. Every word is perfect. Every scene is necessary. Each moment has its exact image, its particular emotional tenor." — Sandra Scofield, Boston Globe

The Montana Stories initiates a joint series by Boiler House Press and the University of Montana Press dedicated to celebrating the work of alumni of the university's legendary creative writing program.