Join Montana Book Company in a conversation with Historian & Writer Betsy Gaines Quammen, author of American Zion & True West. Gaines Quammen collects stories to make sense of a place defined by colonization, extraction, rebellion, myth, beauty, and land.
True West explores myths of the West and how, if left unexamined, they distort the realities of the present and exacerbate polarizations. These misperceptions about land, politics, liberty, and self-determination threaten the wellbeing of western communities overrun by newcomers seeking a dream—and the country, unless America recognizes the dangers of building a national identity on illusion. Gaines Quammen interrogates it all by listening, carefully, to people from varying political and cultural perspectives as she seeks to reconcile the deep anger and broad misunderstandings that linger amid myths that define and impede the West and America.
“In telling the stories that comprise True West, Betsy Gaines Quammen reminds us that in order to keep this fractured country together we must meet our fellow Americans where they are, on their own terms.” —Beto O’Rourke, author of We’ve Got to Try
