In Open Spaces

by Russell Rowland

Set in the vast and unforgiving prairie of eastern Montana from 1916 to 1946, In Open Spaces is the compelling story of the Arbuckle brothers:

GeorgeA rising baseball star who mysteriously drowns in the river

JackA World War I veteran who abandons his family only to return to reclaim the family ranch

BobThe youngest brother, whose marriage to Helen creates a fault line between him and the rest of his family

Blake

A shrewd, observant man burdened with growing suspicions of Jack's role in his brother's death

With breathtaking descriptions of the Montana landscape, Russell Rowland masterfully weaves a fascinating tale of the psychological wars that can rip a family apart...and, ultimately, the redemption that can bring them back together.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Westerns, Contemporary

384 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2002

About the author

I'm a Montana native, and I returned home in 2007. My first novel, In Open Spaces, made the San Francisco Chronicle's bestseller list. I got my MA in Creative Writing from Boston University in 1991, and have been a MacDowell fellow and a fortune cookie writer. The Watershed Years, the sequel to number one, was published in 2007 and was a finalist for the High Plains Book Award. In 2012, WEST OF 98, an anthology I edited with Lynn Stegner, was released by the University of Texas Press. And in 2012r, my third novel, High and Inside, was released by Bangtail Press and was also named a finalist for the High Plains Book Award. In April 2016, Fifty-Six Counties: A Montana Journey came out. This is my first non-fiction effort, about my travels to every county in Montana and what I learned from this journey.

Reviews

[Jeanette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is the Arbuckle family from 1916-46. Whew! I couldn't put it down. Each character is carved and the combination becomes dynamic. Sad and filled with tragedy and yet such STRENGTH!

Very rarely do you get life in the country, farm, ranch etc. away from towns and cities- this well honed. It's a flavor and pattern that is nearly and completely NOT understood in the "me, me, me" world of 2019. And that's why I cherish such honesty in fiction, in print. It's pure. So little is any longer. There is always some relative or subjective "judgment". But in this Montana community- it's far, far more real than just feelings and theories. As real as a dust decade. As real as death in young, tragic and accidental ways. As easy as core purpose connection to land/ soil and a determination for fusing nurture from /with it.

So many secrets kept! Sometimes necessary so that the whole can function? Sometimes protective to this closeness of ranch purposes. Sometimes just easier to conceal for individual "power". Constance and every present- physical work FIRST. No days "off".

Loved it. I can only imagine how these brothers' feelings and resentments stormed but at the same time MADE them. It's something that is nearly lost now. Because there is no commonly held North Star of right/ wrong "rules" but just a floating kind of personal amorality sliding scale. Always centered on a "me, me, me" weight and having little or nothing at all to do with parental dictates to life jobs, living location itself, or ultimate work outcomes. Nor is there guilt of any kind for obscuring or rejecting family onus of required patterns needed for a son or daughter as in the past. That's nearly entirely gone and disdained when it does occur from what I can observe, IMHO. Certainly it is has been understood as valid for the great majority of homo sapiens' history. And still central to many cultures as a life fixture upon which all are required to "hang their hats".

Fabulous read. Highly recommend this particular and precise look into this Montana experience from an era when the men who stuck were honed and tested. And the women as purposed and yet as complex in ambiguities (also choices for their "fulfillment") as the men.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an old-fashioned saga about a family on a ranch in the southeast corner of Montana. The story is told by one of four brothers, starting in 1916 when he is a 14-year-old boy and ending in 1946. Told in the first person, it maintains a 1940s sensibility. For even though it tells the story of the narrator's decades-long attraction to his brother's wife, there is still a chasteness about their relationship that would be implausible in a story told 50 years later. Suppressing his own sexuality, the narrator remains inexperienced well into his 30s, and there is a glancingly graceful moment in his story, as a widow he is courting discovers this on their first night together.

Moving slowly through 30 years of western history, the novel captures the hard-scrabble life of a family on the plains, with accounts of prairie fire, the withering drought of the Depression years, and finally the beginnings of economic recovery as war rages in Europe and the Pacific. Children are born, young adults grow old. There are marriages, illnesses, accidents, and deaths to be mourned. Personalities clash, and conflicts linger without resolution. One brother drowns, another disappears for periods at a time, one brother turns down a chance to play professional baseball, another marries unwisely. And as the years come and go, the family remains on the ranch, finding strength in the land when they do not find it in each other.

Rowland often rises well to the material. The narrator's trip to Omaha, where he secretly meets up with a baseball scout is well told, especially as it includes an encounter with the Negro League pitcher Satchel Paige. An especially vivid scene involves the efforts of two people (the narrator and his sister-in-law) tending to a cow whose womb has prolapsed after giving birth. Their struggle to save the cow, lasting hours, is told in breathtaking detail and grows to an emotional pitch that comes to represent the difficult intensity of their own relationship.

I recommend this novel for those interested in the rural West, ranch life, the Depression, and the intricacies of extended families. It's a good solid read.

[TBV (on hiatus) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

1916-1945
If the freezing Montana winters didn't get you, the loneliness on the farms might. Silence, loneliness and harsh conditions are the norm here, and those who are able to stay and endure tend to adopt a phlegmatic approach to life. And so it is with the Arbuckle family, to the extent that not much is said nor much emotion is shown when the eldest son George drowns (this is not a spoiler - see the book's blurb).

Farm duties demand sacrifices, and honest, hard working Blake (another Arbuckle son) and the narrator of this family saga has to make at least two potentially life changing sacrifices. This too is done quietly and stoïcally, but underneath the surface resentment simmers, as well as suspicions about George Jr's untimely demise. In this family where problems are not discussed, there are plenty of secrets.

Then there is the inevitable black sheep of the family, Jack who simply doesn't fit in, who uses the farm's resources for one hare-brained scheme after another and who periodically disappears from the scene which results in even more work for those left behind. He is not the only one to wreak havoc; there is another toxic element amongst the in-laws.

Times are tough, and soon the country suffers badly due to the Great Depression. Fortunately the Arbuckles, having worked extra extra hard, are not the poorest people on the block and they are able to extend a helping hand to some of the destitute knocking at their door.

It is a bleak, slow moving novel of life on a Montana farm in the first half of the twentieth century, the people who inhabit and work on that farm and their individual secrets. It is about the love of the land, love and unrequited love. It is about silence. Silence features very prominently. It is a tale of survival: surviving the elements, surviving the broken economy, surviving family problems and secrets that threaten to disrupt and destroy.

There is a good sense of time and place, and there are some very nice descriptions of the Montana landscape.

The novel is loosely based on the lives of the author's grandparents.

[Kappy · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. Although I have not lived on a farm, this gave me a picture of how hard the work is and how devastating the depression, drought and dust bowl were for those working the land. Interesting characters seen over time.

[Shaindel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished reading _In Open Spaces_. It was one of those rare novels that I didn't want to put down. Unfortunately, life intruded, and it seemed to take me forever to read it, but I made myself finish it today (despite the piles and piles of papers on my desk--and next to my desk).

Russell Rowland's character development of the Arbuckle brothers--George, Jack, Blake, and Bob--is terrific. Blake, the first person narrator, is so well-written, that I felt like I *knew* him during the entire novel and was being told a story by a good-natured and reliable friend. The descriptions of Montana and ranching are spot on and beautiful.

I have a copy of the sequel, _The Watershed Years_, and hope to get to it soon.

Thank you so much for this masterpiece, Russ! :-)

[Electra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Une lecture passionnante - une grande fresque. Hâte de vous en parler

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

I seldom give books, even good books, five stars, but this book was so wonderful I couldn't resist it. Russell Rowland is a wonderful writer. His dialogues in the book are so natural, it is almost like you are in the room with the characters listening to them talk. His character development was complete and the story line was engrossing. I loved the book and I am currently reading the sequel, "The Watershed Years" which, so far is as good as his first book. I recommend "In Open Spaces" to anyone who enjoys reading about the struggles of a western family during the early part of the 20th century.

[Carl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't read many novels, but this novel was truly wonderful. Rowland writes a touching story about family in Eastern Montana. His tale is about history, hope, family violence, mystery and so much more. There is something to be said about a book that touches the reader in some many ways, yet keeps them wondering and thinking. I am a big fan of Rowland's nonfiction book, West of 98, and now I'm a big fan of his novel. I plan on reading parts two and three, as well another novel, and will surely be impressed. As a reader who is interested in the American West and Pacific Northwest, I feel slightly ashamed for not reading this sooner, but happy to have finally read this masterpiece.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good old-fashioned page-turner which follows a Montana ranching family from 1916-1946. Solidly written, but few moments of shining prose.

[Julene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set in Montana, we step into the lives of the Arbunckle family from 1916 to 1946, through the depression. This is a skilled writer who captures place, people, emotions, and the drama of farm life with its hard work, many losses and grief. Through the eyes of Blake we experience the visceral life on a farm. He stops school at the age of 16 when his brother drowns, because he is needed on the farm. He learns his brother had planned to try out as a pitcher for a baseball team in a city. He finds his brother's drawings of how to hold the ball in the hand, and a ticket to travel that had been sent to him by a scout. He finds himself practicing and curious, so he writes to the scout. Eventually, there is a reason to travel, and he sets up an appointment, he is offered a position on the team, but once home he stays.

There is an influx of people traveling west, and from the beginning we learn these "honyockers" ... "...weren't prepared for what was snow piled as high as their heads, or cold air that froze their tears to their faces." The book shows the rugged conditions, the hard work the pioneers had to do to survive in the elements, and the family relationships where the cultural norm is to hold quiet and not tell your secrets.

Farm life is hard. When they find the cow in the field after giving birth, her uterus hanging outside her body, they must find the calf, then stuggle to push her uterus back inside, with many takes, to exhaustion; two neighbors, a father and son, die in their house in the middle of a long cold winter; the drought goes on for ten years. The neighbor who died had told Blake that, "the land beat the hell out of people," a recurrent theme.

Near the end of the book the oldest son of Blake's brother Jack, also named George, drowns. Blake thinks about his grief and how it grows the same way a child does. "To begin with, neither can speak, although both are adept at making their presence known—sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically. The message may not be clear, but the depth of feeling, the passion, is never in doubt./ As it grows, and ages, grief developes a voice of its own, a voice that needs an attentive, patient ear to express its messages clearly. And if itis ignored, the voice will eventually demand attention, until one day you turn around to find yourself looking it squarely in the face./ There is no choice in this progression. The progression happens whether you permit it or not. The choice comes in how you respond." One of the best personifcations of grief I have ever read.

I am excited to read his next book, The Watershed Years.

[Jayme · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am currently taking part in the Around the USA in 52 Books Challenge and what I am enjoying most about the challenge is that I am reading books that I probably wouldn't have given a second glance. One such book is In Open Spaces.

In Open Spaces is a family saga set in the early 20th century that centers on a ranch in Southeastern Montana and the struggles and conflicts of four brothers who work their family ranch. I was really taken with the vivid descriptions of the prairies of Montana and Rowland's details of life on a cattle/sheep ranch. My only complaint would be that I was left with several questions regarding key events in the lives of several characters which made me frustrated at times. Rowland did write a sequel The Watershed Years so maybe my answers are in that book. This was a quick, easy read which left me wanting to visit the "Open Spaces" of Montana.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was given this book by the author, a friend. I was prepared to read it, and then say something polite about it. I thought that it was not really my type of book: I typically don't read male authors; the primary characters are all male; there is a baseball subplot.
I read the first few pages, and was drawn in by the beautiful descriptions of the stark beauty of the plains. Throughout the book. I marked the passages that beautifully captured particular emotions. As I continued, I found myself caring deeply about the family members. When I wasn't reading the book, I was thinking about them.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first read In Open Spaces, I thought there was too much monologue, but on reflection, it was one of the best books I've read in a long time. Rowland's characters come to life in three dimensional form and I found it very difficult to put it down.

[Julie Waller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hi! I don't remember the last time I reviewed anything. Like maybe never ever. But I have been feeling really compelled to share about this book so here we go. 🌾🌾🌾

"In Open Spaces" is just the richest and sweetest and most well written book I have ever read in my whole life. I appreciate Ivan Doig. I really do. And I have loved his stories of this land that we hold so dear. But Russell Rowland goes way way beyond Ivan Doig. And I know I might be getting myself in a little trouble for saying this.

Russell is a Billings author who has family roots in southeastern Montana. In "In Open Spaces" he weaves the story of a southeastern Montana ranch family as they work their ranch and cling to hope in the early 1900's. The story begins in 1916 and it ends in the mid 1940’s. Truly some of the most difficult years our early Montana settlers had ever seen. My own grandparents and their children fought for survival as homesteaders in north central Montana through those years of deep drought and the Great Depression. As I read "In Open Spaces" I know that this is their story too.

"In Open Spaces" is just a thoughtful and colorful and heartfelt read. It is full of ranch life grit and ranch life gross. And despite the Arbuckle family's heartache and hardship, they share moments of amusing and joyous togetherness as well. Why this book hasn't yet hit The New York Times Bestseller list I do not know.

I think we all kinda need this story. It is the story of a family's grit and faith and goodness. "In Open Spaces" is encouraging my heart to hang in there. I think it will warm and encourage your hearts as well.

Hats off to you Russell Rowland! Thank you for your giftedness. It's a helluva story.

Julie Waller (Old Soul)
Billings, Montana

P.S. Please feel free to share this review with anyone who might be encouraged by an old time drought or a Great Depression. 🥰. We are living in such noisy and confusing times. I can hardly breathe nowadays and there ain’t even any dust.

P.S. Hubby Steve was raised in Harding County, South Dakota. This story is in his neck of the woods. Alazada. Capitol. Camp Crook. So close to home for Steve. Made it all the sweeter.

[James Frase-White · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an epic novel, covering the lives of a family from the viewpoint of one of the brothers in the farm territory of eastern Montana. The story breathes atmosphere, not just of the open rolling prairie, but seems to perspire, to breathe and seethe with the struggle and energy of pre-and depression era, that sucked the country dry in the early part of this century. It is also in many ways a love story, of a family's love and trials, and also a quiet, suprising romance, for land, yes, but the almost inarticulate desire for a partner, to steady the deep passion underlying the tale. A marvelous first book, from an author whose work has steadily grown, like the family farm in this empty quarter of the vast territory of Montana.

[Lydia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Do you want reality or Yellowstone? Based on family history, I wanted these characters to be real. What was difficult was the stoic personalities left questions posed at the beginning of the book unanswered at the conclusion. It was as if the family was just not the least bit curious to know each other as people. One portion I did question as true was that it was acceptable for an unmarried adults - not brother and sister - to live together as husband and wife and no one questioned. Either they took up together as from the time of the Old Testament and continue to the bloodline or they stay in separate houses. It seemed like it was only added for the conclusion.

[Virginia Pulver · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a child of the prairie and even though I have spent many years of my adult life in large cities and living abroad, my heart often longs to be back in the flatlands, hearing the meadowlarks sing and the wind whistling through the grain. Reading Rowland's novel was, in many ways, a small, lovely vacation to another era, another space. The characters ring true and the story that unfolds is familiar and somehow comforting. They could be my relatives. I am eager to continue reding the saga of the Arbuckle brothers.

[Suzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely story about the trials and tribulations of a family living and farming in Montana in the 30’s and 40’s. It’s reminiscent of the Ivan Doig stories that I loved so much. This author’s writing grabs you right at the beginning as you follow the twists and turns of the Arbuckle family. I lived in Montana through two winters and the descriptive verse of the amazing scenery and life skills needed to farm in that state are spot on throughout the story. The characters weave their story with a rich tapestry that brings you in and keeps you there up to the poignant ending.

[Beachbumgarner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came across this book in a little bookstore in TN, and once I sat down to read it, I couldn't put it down. It had the same historic feel and pace as Norman MacLean's "A River Runs Through It" and Jane Smiley's "Last Hundred Years" trilogy, both which I loved. I have not read any of Russell Rowland's work before, but I'm happy to have found him now when the two followup books to this trilogy have already been written and printed and I won't have to wait. Both are coming my way in the mail. Excellent writing.

[Kathryn Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slow paced story of life in the open spaces of eastern Montana, the hard life of farming, living through the Depression and a ten-year drought, family turmoil, death, birth and unrequited love... worth reading, but you can't be in a hurry.

[Marianna Palermo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Relaxingly wonderful!

Enjoyed this book very much. It's the kind of reading that I love; belonging to the people and places with all your heart. I'll miss these characters that I've come to know and love.

[Matt Mesa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful family saga that keeps you engaged as you wonder what’s going to happen to each character. Death was rampant in the early 1900’s—especially when the earth can be so unforgiving. A great story.

[Virginia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great story about a farming family in Montana in the first half of the 1900’s, the struggles, challenges and the family dynamics. Sometimes intense, and author does a wonderful job in painting a verbal picture of the land and the times.

[Russell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good story.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful book set in Montana, where I'm from.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grand family saga set in early to mid 20th century. Great depiction of prairie farm life and the people who lived it.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

East of Eden light.

[Donna J. Montmeny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great history of eastern MT

Winning writing style, well developed characters. Makes you want to read the next book in the series to see what happens

[Jennie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very little happens, and yet the understated writing about a family in Montana during the early 1900s was wonderful. I was sad to see it end, and I’ll look for another just like this.

[Joyce Olsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quietly captivating

I wasn't sure I'd enjoy this series, but I would recommend it. No heavy plots, no graphic sex or violence, just a thought-provoking good read.