Thank you to the publisher BHC Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this in advance.
I thoroughly enjoyed this. It's a story of a group of characters in a small notch of North Dakota nestled up against the Canadian border. Hard countryside, hard weather, hard lives for the most part.
The structure, as I was reading it felt a bit disjointed, especially in the first quarter of the book but as I fell into the rhythm of it I actually thought it added to the experience. There's one particular transition from one set of characters to another that could be taken as particularly jarring since it goes from deep hardship of the practical and psychological kinds to almost outright comedy. But it works. That particular comedic chapter put me strongly in mind of the late, great Howard Frank Mosher's tales of the the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Some great characters, set pieces, and writing. Even that geographical setting is similar, that ignoring of the man-made border between countries and the influence of the French trappers from the Canadian side on the people on the American side.
The depressing reality of the experiences of Native Americans living on reservations and cheek-by-jowl with white people is insinuated and touched on throughout the book and I felt that there were some parallel's with Tiffany McDaniels' novel 'Betty' throughout.
Ultimately, stories about characters like this in settings like this rarely end up well or happy and there's a lot of that here but not exclusively so,
I'd recommend this strongly.