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    A Study Guide for Larry Watson's "Montana 1948"
    A Study Guide for Larry Watson's "Montana 1948"
    A Study Guide for Larry Watson's "Montana 1948"
    Ebook48 pages54 minutes

    A Study Guide for Larry Watson's "Montana 1948"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Larry Watson's "Montana 1948," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJun 27, 2016
    ISBN9781535828819
    A Study Guide for Larry Watson's "Montana 1948"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Larry Watson's "Montana 1948" - Gale

      12

      Montana 1948

      Larry Watson

      1993

      Introduction

      Montana 1948, released in 1993, was Larry Watson's second published novel (the first, In a Dark Time, was his doctoral thesis from the University of Utah). The events of the story, which occur when protagonist David Hayden is twelve years old, are narrated by an adult David some forty years later. David's Uncle Frank, a doctor, is discovered to have molested Native American women patients from the nearby reservation. Since David's father (Frank's brother) is the town sheriff, the revelation precipitates a crisis of conscience for him that will eventually tear the Hayden family apart. All these crises occur while David is already struggling with the difficulties of growing into manhood.

      In this coming-of-age tale, Watson explores themes of prejudice, moral ambiguity, the abuse of power and privilege, and the struggle to establish one's identity (at any age). The effects of childhood events and relationships on the rest of an individual's life are a motif Watson returns to in later novels, including Laura (2000), in which a boy develops a lifelong obsession with his father's mistress, and Sundown, Yellow Moon (2007), in which a writer is haunted by a tragedy he witnessed in childhood. Some critics have compared the novel to Harper Lee's 1960 classic To Kill a Mockingbird.

      Author Biography

      Watson was born in the small town of Rugby, North Dakota, on September 13, 1947. Like Wesley Hayden, the father in Montana 1948, Watson's father was a sheriff. When Watson was five, however, his family moved to the larger city of Bismarck, North Dakota, where his father practiced law. Watson grew up in Bismarck and attended the University of North Dakota, intending to study law. In 1967, while still in college, he married his high school girlfriend, Susan Gibbons.

      Watson's plan to study law was put aside when, inspired by writing classes and encouragement from his professors, he instead decided to study creative writing and become a teacher. He earned a masters degree from the University of North Dakota, and then a Ph.D. from the University of Utah. The novel he wrote as his thesis, titled In a Dark Time, was published by Scribner's, but despite favorable reviews, it was not wildly successful.

      In 1978, Watson moved on to the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, where he taught literature and writing for the next twenty-five years. He continued to write, publishing short stories and poetry. However, he struggled to find publishers for his novels. Finally, in 1993, unable to find a publisher for his most recent novel, Montana 1948, he entered his manuscript as a contender for the Milkweed National Fiction Prize (sponsored by independent publisher Milkweed Press). The novel won and was published by Milkweed Press.

      With glowing reviews from many prominent newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, Montana 1948 became Milkweed Press's best-selling book to date (as of 2011). Still intrigued by the novel's characters, Watson followed with a fiction collection, Justice, that served as a prequel, telling the story of the Hayden family leading up to the

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