Beartooth

Wink (August), who works as a fly-fishing guide on the Yellowstone River, mines his extensive knowledge of the great outdoors in this transportive novel of two brothers living on the margins in the Beartooth mountains of Montana. Thad, 27, and Hazen, 26, are deep in debt from their late father’s hospital bills, and eke out an existence by logging, fishing, and bear poaching. Thad shoulders the burden of their survival, frequently overriding Hazen, who is simpleminded but extremely competent and instinctive in the wild. When a neighbor known as “the Scot,” who recently killed someone for breaking into his house, proposes an illegal scheme to remove shed antlers from the national park, Thad refuses, but the Scot manipulates Hazen, who has a soft spot for the Scot’s daughter, into defying his brother. Complicating matters is the arrival of their hippie mother, Sacajawea, who abandoned the family years earlier. While the narrative tension is inconsistent, Wink mesmerizes with his descriptions of nature and the men’s survival skills, and he successfully portrays the brothers’ humanity in their dance between struggling for dominance and wanting to support each other. Admirers of Thomas McGuane ought to seek this out. Agent: Chris Parris-Lamb, Gernert Co. (Feb.)