HORATIO POTTER BOOKS
“A powerful work of striking beauty that aims to help readers more deeply understand their own changing lives.” —Kirkus Reviews
Abraham Carver, an out-of-work miner back home in Montana, seeks solace and refuge after surviving a mine fire in Nevada, attempting to outrun his demons. Abe’s trajectory intersects with seventy-five-year-old Buck McCafferty, an emblematic rancher leading a hardscrabble hand-to-mouth existence on his family’s homestead ranch on the idyllic Smith River.
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Set in the present, Benchland tells the intertwined stories of personal trauma and economic struggle amidst the flood of newcomers, recreational interests and billionaires threatening a small ranching community and the traditional ways of living upon the land.
Advance Praise for Benchland
“A powerful work of striking beauty that aims to help readers more deeply
understand their own changing lives.”
—Kirkus
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“…a spellbinding novel that explores life, change, and tension in the American West. I connected with how real the characters are—complex, intriguing, and never entirely good or bad.”
—David Jaggart for Readers' Favorite
“Readers seeking stories that eschew the hollow, melodramatic pageantry of slick Hollywood shows like Yellowstone will appreciate this novel of emotional excavation.”
—BlueInk Review
“…small lives of seeming insignificance unfold, each realizing, in their own way, that their existence is really 'just about getting away,' escaping past trauma, painful legacies, and humanity’s seemingly inevitable march toward destruction.”
—BookLife Reviews
“Concerned with the transformation of rural communities under the pressures of regeneration, Benchland is a revealing and atmospheric novel.”
—Clarion Reviews
HORATIO POTTER has run a cattle ranch in western Montana for thirty-three years. He received his MFA from the University of Montana in 2002, and has published stories in Glimmer Train, Roanoke Review, Whitefish Review, Montana Quarterly, and other publications. He is currently completing a collection of short fiction.
