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Return to Independence Basin
Kirkus Recommended Book February 2017
A man returns to the small western town where he grew up and finds that his family history won’t stay buried in this
debut novel.
In 1979, Joe Meeks is a construction worker with a penchant for getting thrown off jobs for second-guessing the
engineering. He’s on a building site in New York City when his cousin Evan Gallantine shows up with both bad and
good on the one hand, Joe’s long-estranged father has died; on the other, his passing clears the way to sell the
Meeks’ hardscrabble ranch for a handsome sum to dam developers. Joe goes to the town of Meagher, Montana, and then up to the Meeks ranch, to try to convince his ornery 90-year-old grandmother, Frances, the last holdout among the local ranchers, to sell the spread. Joe brings along Wade, a 12-year-old boy who looks like him but whom he’s reluctant to call his son, as he reconnects with Meagher’s colorful denizens. As Wade falls in love with the ranch, Joe has misgivings about selling out and running from a guilty past. The novel effectively explores the conflict between yearning for the wider world and staying rooted in place, no matter how wretched the land and searing the memories. Feeling a bit like a mashup of Larry McMurtry and the 1990s TV series Northern Exposure, Ellison’s tale features wonderfully evocative descriptions of Montana’s majestic landscapes and richly atmospheric cow-town settings. Amid well-paced scenes and punchy, pitch-perfect dialogue, it also includes vivid, sharply individuated characters, including Joe’s rapscallion ex-con uncle Harlo; Father Sterling, whose Sunday services are popular for their copiously alcoholic Communion libations; feisty redhead Marly Croft, old flame of Joe’s who wants to turn her decrepit Grand Hotel into a swanky inn to cater to Evan’s visions of Meagher as an Aspen-style resort; and Marly’s even feistier daughter Anne, whose native truculence (“What’re you lookin at?”) subsides into an infatuation with Joe. There’s also the elderly Frances, an ex-deputy who once shot a robber and then fielded a marriage proposal from the crook’s partner. The final result is first-rate storytelling with a powerful emotional undercurrent.
A haunting but hopeful story of the New West and the unlikely passions it stirs.
A man returns to the small western town where he grew up and finds that his family history won’t stay buried in this
debut novel.
In 1979, Joe Meeks is a construction worker with a penchant for getting thrown off jobs for second-guessing the
engineering. He’s on a building site in New York City when his cousin Evan Gallantine shows up with both bad and
good on the one hand, Joe’s long-estranged father has died; on the other, his passing clears the way to sell the
Meeks’ hardscrabble ranch for a handsome sum to dam developers. Joe goes to the town of Meagher, Montana, and then up to the Meeks ranch, to try to convince his ornery 90-year-old grandmother, Frances, the last holdout among the local ranchers, to sell the spread. Joe brings along Wade, a 12-year-old boy who looks like him but whom he’s reluctant to call his son, as he reconnects with Meagher’s colorful denizens. As Wade falls in love with the ranch, Joe has misgivings about selling out and running from a guilty past. The novel effectively explores the conflict between yearning for the wider world and staying rooted in place, no matter how wretched the land and searing the memories. Feeling a bit like a mashup of Larry McMurtry and the 1990s TV series Northern Exposure, Ellison’s tale features wonderfully evocative descriptions of Montana’s majestic landscapes and richly atmospheric cow-town settings. Amid well-paced scenes and punchy, pitch-perfect dialogue, it also includes vivid, sharply individuated characters, including Joe’s rapscallion ex-con uncle Harlo; Father Sterling, whose Sunday services are popular for their copiously alcoholic Communion libations; feisty redhead Marly Croft, old flame of Joe’s who wants to turn her decrepit Grand Hotel into a swanky inn to cater to Evan’s visions of Meagher as an Aspen-style resort; and Marly’s even feistier daughter Anne, whose native truculence (“What’re you lookin at?”) subsides into an infatuation with Joe. There’s also the elderly Frances, an ex-deputy who once shot a robber and then fielded a marriage proposal from the crook’s partner. The final result is first-rate storytelling with a powerful emotional undercurrent.
A haunting but hopeful story of the New West and the unlikely passions it stirs.
252 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 15, 2016
1 person is currently reading
250 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 9, 2017
Story about a guy returning to his past in isolated Montana mountains. Fascinating look at a part of America many aren't familiar with. Our hero has to deal with his past and his family and make some decisions. And this guy hates to make decisions, but would rather just avoid issues and criticize. Which got a little tiresome after a while, but resolution arrives in the final pages. Nice work, Matt!
January 5, 2021
Return to Independence Basin shows how an ancestral landscape can lurk in the soul of a man who flees it, and in the DNA of child raised far away and unawares. The author has a pack-guide's knowledge of the terrain and a rural pastor's understanding of its characters. This is a book of rusty trucks, broken barns and dirt roads into remote hills, of a barren town and its inhabitants. It is told in an evocative, precise vernacular, with threads of magic realism.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews