INVITATION TO A HANGING

Rathert’s novel shows how life more than a century ago on the Montana–North Dakota border was not for the fainthearted.

Mondak, a ghost town now, was a place with potential in the past, and what made it unique was that its main street straddled the state line between the “drinking state” of Montana and “dry” North Dakota, so the bars and brothels were on one side, and the banks, churches, and other socially acceptable establishments were on the other. In this setting, readers meet an initially mysterious teenager named Adam; then they’re introduced to Alta Woburn, a romantic who comes from privilege and knows very little of life, so it’s no surprise that she falls for Stanley Olson, a sharp-dressing grifter with designs on her father’s fortune. Other characters include Wendell, Stanley’s uncle, who tries to look after young Adam, and Smoke, an Indigenous man who has a crucial role in the story. Jake Steel is a visionary entrepreneur with big plans for Mondak and for his own bottom line (Stanley is his lackey). These and others play parts that are comic and tragic, but readers will finally realize that the work is Adam’s coming-of-age story at its heart. Will he realize that Jake is bad news and that outside the town is a wider, better world? Over the course of this historical novel, Rathert effectively manages to paint a portrait of Mondak as a topographical allegory of a divided soul. Along the way, she proves herself to be a stylist with a lyric gift—one who is capable of such lines as “Weren’t the living walking the path cleared by the dead?” When the circus train comes to town, the author describes it as “like the birth of the world”—a phrase that introduces multiple paragraphs of pure exuberance and energy.

A work that will enchant readers with its poetic prose.