The Harrows: A Novel of the American Century
With The Harrows, Matt Pavelich offers us a third splendid novel-this one, a true family saga of the American West. The Harrows tells its multigenerational story with great wisdom, heart, and (often hilarious) humor.
The novel begins at the start of the 20th century with Charlie Harrow, erstwhile freighter, and his beloved Dove, schoolmarm and homesteader in her own right, establishing the family farm on Montana's fabled Square Butte Bench, a "place of taunting, receding horizons." The novel ends on the same place, with the return of a great-granddaughter intent, unaccountably, on continuing the family operation.
While one member of each generation stays on, and makes the place thrive, others travel far afield, to the killing fields of World War Two, to drug-running adventures off the coast of Morocco, to the jazz clubs of Great Falls and Los Angeles, to military drudgery and tragedy on Okinawa during the Vietnam conflict, to the quiet bookish neighborhoods of Portland.
The intertwining stories of these remarkable Harrows-Charlie and Dove, George and Verity, Tel and Jeet, Carrie and Elizabeth- tell us of a beautiful, often unforgiving place and of what it means to be family, in all our imperfections, our sorrows, and our joys.
The Harrows is a gorgeous piece of work. It seems destined to become an American classic.
-Rick Newby, author of A Regionalism That Travels: Writings on (Mostly) Montana Arts, 1975-2022
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