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178 Western American Literature Justice. By Larry Watson. (M inneapolis: M ilkweed Editions, 1995. 226 pages, $17.95.) Larry W atson’s novel Montana 1948 received the 1993 M ilkweed National Fiction Prize and earned w ell-deserved national acclaim. Watson, who teaches at the University o f W isconsin at Stevens Point, has follow ed up his success with a prequel to that novel, a fine collection of stories that extends his evoca­ tive fam ily chronicle, exploring the early lives of various characters from 1899 to 1937. M ontana 1948 was narrated by a middle-aged David Hayden reflecting back on boyhood experiences in northeastern Montana. Justice records inci­ dents in the lives of D avid’s father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, and fam­ ily friend Len M cAuley. Loosely, uninsistently organized around the theme of “justice”— which is variously figured as punishment, moral rebuke, and the sting of felt injustice— the stories gain a cumulative power reminiscent of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. Justice conjures up the same kind of fugitive em otion and secretive nuances of sm all-town behavior. Watson also excels at creating sudden high-tension vignettes. In the lengthy opening story, for instance, four adolescent boys looking for kicks in a dingy North Dakota town meet their humiliating comeuppance in an unforget­ table scene set in a snowy back-alley, with the boys’ trousers and drawers down around their feet. As in M ontana 1948, there is a lyrical, som etim es nostalgic ache as Watson describes the fictional town of Bentrock, Montana. He has an im peccable sense o f detail, whether noting the food at a country wedding (“the platters of steaks and ribs, the bow ls of beans, the stacks o f fresh-baked bread, the crocks of fresh-churned butter, and the pies cut from their tins and stacked three and four high”) or Thursday night poker games in the garage o f a Studebaker dealership. The players “crush out their sm okes right on the oil-stained concrete floor” and use chips “stamped with the letters B.P.O.E. because they once belonged to an Elks Club in another city.” Both Justice and M ontana 1948 have been picked up as trade paperbacks by W ashington Square Press: another sign that Watson is a writer to watch, as he continues to transform an unstoried corner of Montana into his own postage stamp of native soil. MICHAEL KOWALEWSKI Carleton C ollege A B oyhood in the D ust Bowl 1926-1934. By Robert A llen Rutland. (Niwot: U niversity Press o f Colorado, 1995. 133 pages, $22.50.) In outline, Rutland’s early life sounds like som e o f the grimmer passages ...

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