"In this haunting parable of the American west, a young woman faces the violent past of a remote Montana valley. In Montana's Bitterroot Valley, a young Ruthie Fear sees an apparition: a strange, headless creature near a canyon creek. Raised in a trailer by her stubborn, bowhunting father, Ruthie develops a powerful connection with the natural world but struggles to find her place in a society shaped by men. As she comes of age, her small community fractures in the face of class tension and encroaching natural disaster, and the creature she saw long ago reappears. An entirely new kind of Western and the first novel from one of this generation's most "wildly imaginative" (NPR) writers, RUTHIE FEAR captures the destruction and rebirth of the modern American West with warmth, urgency, and grandeur. Loskutoff presents this place as balanced on a knife's edge, at war with itself, but still unbearably beautiful and full of love"--Provided by publisher

Montana's Bitterroot Valley. Raised in a trailer by her stubborn, bowhunting father, Ruthie Fear develops a powerful connection with the natural world but struggles to find her place in a society shaped by men. As a child, she saw an apparition: a strange, headless creature near a canyon creek. Coming of age, her small community fractures in the face of class tension and encroaching natural disaster, and the creature she saw long ago reappears. -- adapted from jacket