Tag Archives: Montana authors

About that pacifist, Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin from Montana …

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Photo shows Jeanmarie Bishop

Jeanmarie Bishop has performed dozens of roles in regional theatre and stock in the US and Canada and began directing while still in her teens. Jeanmarie is founding artistic director of the Nevada Shakespeare Company, from which she retired in 2008. She lives in Arizona, where she continues to act and write.

(I wrote this as the foreword for Jeanmarie Bishop’s new published play about Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress. “Tens of thousands have seen the play in theatres, meeting halls and living rooms throughout the world,” Bishop writes.)

By Kevin S. Giles

It’s been said that to truly understand Jeannette Rankin requires practicing what drove her through a lifelong pursuit of pacifism. Otherwise we stare at her through a looking glass from afar, seeing eventful mileposts but never breathing the rarefied air of her innermost thoughts. Yes, Rankin was the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress. She was the only American to vote against two world wars. She was widely vilified for doing that, but why?

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‘Down Under’ … yes, even years later, our living in Australia remains unforgettable

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Photo shows wallabies in Australia

Becky and Kevin S. Giles found a few wallaby friends in Queensland, Australia.

(I wrote this for Australian newspapers after our visit in 2002 to renew friendships made when we lived in Brisbane. It’s worth repeating for anyone interested in a journey Down Under.)

By Kevin S. Giles

The conversations go something like this:

“I heard you went somewhere exotic on your vacation?”

I grin, because I can hardly stop myself from sharing one of those dreaded “you know what I did?” travelogues.

“Yes, I went to Australia.”

“That’s so cool!” comes the reply. “I’ve always wanted to go there. I hear it’s a really great place.” And then comes the puzzled question: “Where exactly did you go?”

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Author Kevin S. Giles: If you want readers, publishing is only part of a long story

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Photo shows Kevin S. Giles

The author, Kevin S. Giles, pondering his next cavalcade of words. Sunglasses optional.

By Kevin S. Giles

I learned a few things. One of these discoveries was a reminder that promoting a book takes a lot of work, even more than it did in the early Internet era. Infinite online opportunities await hopeful authors. So does the challenge of cutting through the “noise” of tens of millions of people trying to get noticed all at once, many of them promoting a political bias or sharing false information. Yes, the Internet has opened a new frontier to authors. No, finding an audience doesn’t come easy, because distractions abound.

When I published Summer of the Black Chevy, the spam started rolling in like a winter storm. Internet marketers promise they can deliver a rich market of readers — for an undisclosed price, of course — and they aren’t entirely wrong about that. Navigating the Internet, and rising above the noise, does require a strategy that largely involves social media to target customers.

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Two books, one small western Montana hometown, 800 pages of storytelling

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Photo shows Deer Lodge, Montana

Main Street in Deer Lodge, Montana, as it looked in 2013. This photo, by Pat Hansen, was published in the Montana Standard.

Since I wrote this post I’ve published a third book of interest to Montanans: my biography, One Woman Against War: The Jeannette Rankin Story.

By Kevin S. Giles

A wise uncle told me once that when I found a good place to live, don’t blab about it. There’s no faster way to ruin paradise, he counseled me, than putting it on the map.

Sorry about that, uncle. The secret’s out.

I’ve written about Deer Lodge, Montana, in my two latest books, which I imagine is just about the most anybody has written about a hometown anywhere in Montana. I doubt either book will start a stampede to Deer Lodge. Word’s getting around, though. It’s a town that’s climbing in the search engine rankings, and in today’s digital world, that’s something.

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Miles traveled: A writer’s journey began in the mountains of western Montana

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Photo shows Kevin S. Giles

This was during the time I wrote “Flight of the Dove.” I was at my paying job (or appearing so) in the Independent Record newsroom in Helena, Montana.

By Kevin S. Giles

Ideas for writing fiction tumbled around in my head for most of the bouncing long road through adulthood. I also deal in fact. I still can’t say with certainty which is harder to write.

I wrote Flight of the Dove: The Story of Jeannette Rankin on a typewriter when my second daughter, Harmony, was a baby. Looking back, writing nonfiction in the pre-Internet days seems somewhat of a miracle. I spent hours in the library at card files, and writing letters to distant places, and trying to revise my story by retyping pages time and again. The new edition of the Rankin book (One Woman Against War), which I launched in 2016, benefits from technology that puts information at our fingertips.

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Remembering a night in Missoula, Montana, with western novelist A.B. Guthrie

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By Kevin S. Giles

Somewhere into that alcohol-fueled book signing that evening, Pulitzer Prize winner A.B. Guthrie warned us to “get the hell out of newspapering” if we had any hope of becoming serious fiction writers.

The famous novelist, a slender man who I remember favored unfiltered cigarettes and straight whiskey that night, sat between two authors of far less repute at a table stacked with books. I was to his left admiring my new book, Flight of the Dove: The Story of Jeannette Rankin. To his right was Steve Smith with his fine new book about Smokejumper pilots, Fly the Biggest Piece Back.

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Montana native remembers his first cars (and motorcycles, and ranch summers)

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Photo shows blue pickup

Young men from Deer Lodge, from left: David Lintz, car sentimentalist Earl Cook, Eric Coughlin, Kevin Giles. This was 10 years after our high school graduation. We were classmates.

By Earl Cook

I am car poor. There are three vehicles in my garage and my wife has her own (x license and insurance). Cars can have addictive properties for guys of my vintage. I particularly like the cars from the 50’s and 60’s, though many new model cars turn my head. Around, and around. “They don’t make ‘em like they used to.” No. They make “em” better. And right in-the-face of powerful, practical, cultural change, there is still the desire for additional horsepower and roaring pipes.

Photo shows pickup

Here is the famous 1956 Chevy pickup we all remember.

When I was 11 years old my Uncle Frank and Aunt Joan invited me to the Helmville (Montana) Valley during the summer months to “work for wages.” I couldn’t do much. Pick weeds, feed the bum lambs, bring in the milk cow, follow behind Frank and pay attention. He put me in the seat, behind the wheel of a 1942 Willy’s Army surplus jeep. It had a homemade plywood top with removable doors. I was instructed to put the jeep in compound gear, let the clutch out slowly, and steer between the bales of hay, up and down the meadow. He half-walked, half-skipped alongside and bucked bales onto a skid of lodge pole pine. Boy did I think I was somethin’!

When I returned to school in the fall, I was quick to boast to my friends that “I could drive!” My Dad got tired of my requests to back his car out of the garage and ended it with, “not until you have your license.” From that day forward, all I thought about was the day that I would get my driver’s license.

The following summer I was introduced to a Ford tractor and side-delivery rake. Frank mowed hay with a tractor and side-bar sickle. Aunt Joan would cut out “a piece” of ground by making the first pass in the field, pulling the mowed grass from the irrigation ditch, and return in the opposite direction, forming the first windrow, and then hand over the equipment to me.

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Ed “Bus” Ellsworth: A National Guard colonel recalls a deadly Montana prison riot

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Guards at prison

Victor Baldwin, shown fourth from right in this 1970s photo, survived being taken hostage in 1959. Many of these guards shown here were involved in the riot or began work at the prison soon afterwards. Photo permitted by Don DeYott of Montana State Prison

By Kevin S. Giles

In the 30 years since his last days as warden, Ed “Bus” Ellsworth had never gone inside the old prison in Deer Lodge. I coaxed him back on a raw March afternoon, anxious to hear what he could remember about the 1959 riot and its aftermath.

I was researching a book I planned to write someday. I didn’t have a title for it because, like writers do, I was trying to find the central story. Newspaper reports of the day described the riot as “a failed escape attempt by a desperate madman.” That seemed much too predictable an explanation, and I thought Ellsworth could give me some perspective.

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