Short Review written for Book Browse (www.bookbrowse.com), reprinted here with permission:

*Coming of Age in Rural America: Complicated and Gorgeous*
Ruthie Fear is a beautiful coming of age story. Loskutoff's descriptive style is vivid, immersing the reader into the bleakness of growing up poor in a beautiful part of Montana.

The banality and tension of being raised an only child of a destitute, single, yet loving, father is visceral.

The characters are deep and multidimensional. Their conflicted emotions twist the reader in knots -- from empathy to anger.

If you ever wondered what a mashup of "Catcher in the Rye" and "No Country for Old Men" might be like, this is it. I found myself becoming completely invested in the female heroine.

Guns, taxidermy, high school football, good ol' boys, class conflict, sweeping landscapes... and an ending that works marvelously, even though it is as surreal as a Pynchon plot twist.

This one will stick with you for a long while. Best novel of the year potential.

Ruthie Fear: A Novel
by Maxim Loskutoff
Fascinating Coming of Age Tale (6/1/2020)
Ruthie Fear is a survivor, which makes her a heroine of sorts in the beautifully written, albeit depressing novel of a young girl growing to womanhood in the poverty stricken, desperate environment of the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana. The writing style is luscious. I wanted to envelope Ruthie in my arms & rescue her. But, at times I struggled with the depths of depression the story caused me to feel. And I just couldn't embrace the 'headless creature' specter. (less)

I'm so so sorry but I didn't get to this book last month. I wanted to read and even recommended it on our chat with the author of EVERY BONE A PRAYER, but it just didn't happen. I'm sure its a great title, but I can't say one way or another.

Ruthie grows up in a trailer with her father in Montana. She is an outsider even in her own rural world, both loathing and also loving the bare subsistence of her life with her father. Abandoned by his wife and angry at the loss of land and water he once had free reign to enjoy, Ruthie's father is an interesting man perhaps not so well equipped to raise a girl. But Ruthie grows, and as she does finds her place in the wilds of Montana.

An interesting atmospheric read.

A huge thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.

This book had everything. Creepy vibes. Social commentary. A fierce heroine with a unique voice. An ending that I could never have predicted.

When we meet our narrator, she is six years old and knows that what she saw in the mist is a monster. She spends most of her childhood plotting to see it again, and hones her sharpshooter skills in the hope of capturing it. Her friend Pip is the only one who believes her outlandish story, and it bonds them through their hardscrabble lives. They grow up in a world in the midst of change.

The mysterious forest and foreboding mountains that have defined Ruthie's childhood are being devoured by the modern world. Those that have lived in the Bitterroot their entire lives eke out an existence. But the rich have discovered the oasis, and are building sprawling mansions in the foothills that are incongruous with the rugged landscape. The wild places begin to disappear. Ruthie's father Rutherford has spent his life stalking prey across the unforgiving terrain, and is embittered and outraged by the changes.

People flock to the valley looking for serenity and escape, but they are corrupting the very things that make it special.

I was intrigued by the premise of this book and Maxim Loskutoff definitely delivered. A unique take on a pressing issue.

A reader will find no easy answers in this story of the American west. Ruthy Fear is 6 years old when the story begins. She lives with her father in the Bitter Root Valley of Montana and she sees a terrifying headless creature. She searches for it for most of her life. I don’t think I am as adept a reader as this novel expects me to be. There is much that went over my head in the comparisons of nature and man, man and woman, love and hate. Metaphors abound. It was just too much for me.

Smart, Original and Completely Absorbing

A richly observed tale spiked with survival and violence, rough justice, and love.

The reader meets Ruthie Fear when she is six years old and follow her up until her early thirties as she battles her inner demons on what type of life does she want to live as her home in the Bitter Root Valley, Montana is battling its own demons of progress versus preserving the present.

The plotting is intricate, the characters are well drawn and the pace never lets up as there are natural and man-made disasters to provide the tensions between people as they attempt to survive and thrive.

This tale of the American West is complexly layered and provides no easy answers as I pondered what would I do in the various situations.

But, if for no other reason, read this book for the spectacular landscape writing.

I’m judging a 2020 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.


Her father's friends—Kent Willis, Raymond Pompey, and the Salish brothers Terry and Billy French—drank themselves into stupors of displaced rage and stumbled outside to shoot bottles off a busted washing machine. The glass shards glinted kaleidoscopically in the morning sunlight while the men snored in the living room, their arms sprawled tenderly over each other's chests, showing affection in sleep in away that would be impossible awake. -12

The location is one of the most important characters in this book. It took a little to get into the book, but once I did, I could not put it down. The ending was a bit surprising, a bit of a blend of Twin Peaks with Stranger Things.

Thank you to W.W. Norton Company for allowing me to read this book. Expected publication: September 1st 2020

For me this book was very unusual. There were some beautiful descriptions of the Montana landscape and mountain ranges throughout the story, but the plot line was an all together different manner. The story revolved around death - both animal and human deaths.

Ruthie Fear was the main character - from her youth, with only a father to raise her in a poor hollow of undeveloped land to her adulthood in the same poor scratch for a living substance, just outside a Native American reservation.

Native American themes, fantasy monsters, pain and sorrow, and death propels this story along. In many parts I felt the story was very disjointed and really made no sense with the only thing to fall back on was Ruthie's age and where her situation was at the time.

Very unusual that a male author would decide to write a book through the eyes of an adolescent girl. Possibly that is where I read the lack of common elements and felt the story was disjointed.

Ruthie Fear was a compelling story, written in a style I really like - short sentences, harsh truths, often achingly beautiful. Maxim Luskutoff has quite an imagination, writing from the point of view of a girl who lives in poverty almost off the grid, whose mother left when she was very young, raised by a father who does his best. It was a fascinating story, and I really enjoyed the depiction of life in rural Montana, the progression of Ruthie’s life with its truth, lack of apology, and poignant, sensitive aspects - all the way til the very end. The end followed up on a strange occurrence from the beginning of the story, but it was too sudden and fantastical and weird for me. I wish the author had maintained the same tone as the rest of the book and continued the story of Ruthie’s life. But I really enjoyed the way he writes, and I will read his collection of stories next, to see if they are similar - having great empathy for and understanding of the characters, regardless of their difference in gender or age from his own, and describing nuances of life in interesting depth.

I'm so glad to have met Ruthie Fear and accompanied her from childhood through a "coming-of-age" narrative marked by a strong tie to the world of nature and bruising experiences with the people she encounters. Ruthie has a mind of her own, a persistent drive to be herself in spite of the expectations of her society. And that society is so far from my own that it is both painful and thrilling. The writing is beautiful. Characters are diverse, wildly so. There are moments when I was reluctant to turn the page but at the same time anxious to find out what comes next. Trigger alert for those who are disturbed by, shall we say, unkind treatment of animals - this may not be the read for you.

Really good read,the life of Ruthie Fear growing up in the bitterroot valley of Montana. Living with her father it’s a look at life in the rural west.the ending will blow you away,read it

The story of Ruthie and her place in the world is beautifully and poetically told. The world she inhabits is gritty and real and she vacillates between hating it and needing to be a part of it. I had to put the book down at times just to step away from the emotion I would start to feel, only to be drawn right back into the story a few hours later. I am blown away by the writing and storytelling and would recommend the book to anyone.

Ruthie is being raised by her father, who knows nothing about how to raise a female. Or really anything about females at all. She's growing up in a poor community alongside mansions, causing class conflict and unrest in her community. A good story that I would recommend.

This is a hard book to review because it exists on so many levels.
It is the story of a young girl coming of age, with her father, in the country of Montana. It is always lyrical and a bit out there as their lives are impacted by increasing population, pollution and progress. The climactic chapters veer off into a cautionary horror tale with death and destruction.
Despite all the many aspects of the story, it remains a tale of the love for a father and daughter.
I think adventurous readers who can let their imaginations loose will like this book.

Ruthie Fear is well written and gives a sense of living in poverty in the Bitterroot Valley alongside million dollar mansions on what used to be traditional hunting grounds. The narrative follows the life of Ruthie as she is raised alongside nature by her young father. While it’s a fresh take on the American west genre, I didn’t connect with the book.

A different type of read for me, with unusual Characters and grand scenery of Montana. Ruthie was raised by an alcoholic Father who knew nothing about raising a girl with all the biological and feminine attributes of being a female! However, he knew how to hunt, trap and live in the rugged outdoors and that was what he taught Ruthie. Teaching her this helped her to survive in a different sort of way. As an outdoor kind of gal, Ruthie sees something weird roaming in the woods. A secret she keeps for many years, one day the reveal...… a moment that makes her and her Father come together ! So, does this change Ruthie's mind about men? Would she leave Montana? Maybe find her Mother? What's going on inside Rockie Mountain Labs? Will she ever find Jon Sitka? So many questions left behind. Guess the author will need to write a sequel!?!

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3354257979

Advance reader copy. I appreciate the opportunity to review this book in advance of publication.

For three quarters of this book (except for one quibble I will mention below), I was enthralled by this novel, deeply moved by the characters who people it, in admiration of the author's ability to portray the reality of the lives in which they find themselves, and in awe of the quality of the writing.

Ruthie Fear is a girl who becomes a woman in the course of the novel, raised by her father in a teal trailer in the middle-of-nowhere Montana that is slowly transforming into a bedroom community for larger cities, as such cities are encroaching on the wild places around them all over the country. Their community is a poor one, and the wealthy who come to settle there (if only into their vacation homes for a few months a year) are deeply resented and despised. For the most part, Ruthie is no exception to the general run of those who have lived here their whole lives: stubborn, restless, angry, sad, struggling people who both love the land they live in and feel trapped by that love. At one point Ruthie tries to get away, but she has no tools for living anywhere but this little backwater town.

Violence and guns are a way of life to Ruthie, who grows up knowing how to shoot, with a father who loves to own guns and give them to his daughter as gifts, so that when she reaches adulthood she has no fewer than seven guns to her name. There are other forms of violence, too, of a more pedestrian kind; fistfights and threats, emotional manipulation and near-rape. For all this, Ruthie lives a fairly normal life, graduating high school, working in the local diner, trying to make a life for herself. Men enter and leave her life, and their presence or absence is the driving force behind much of what transpires in the book.

So far, so good. All of this is movingly told, with a poetic sense for the use of language and a fine ear for dialogue. (The one exception is the use of sentence fragments; though I understand the power of this technique, pulling the reader up short, forcing us to pay attention, Loskutoff resorts to fragments far too often for this to be effective. They begin to feel merely sloppy, displaying a lack of care, the casual use of a period where a comma or semicolon would have sufficed and not interrupted the flow).

But in the final quarter of the book, the allegory which has been lurking takes over the story, becoming the entirety of it. One could speculate on what is meant by what transpires, and I suppose to the author it had some great message to convey, but to me it seems mostly a way to shock our sensibilities, scold us for expecting a conventional ending to a lovely, sad story. I am sure our destructiveness as a species played a part in this calculated plot turn, and it's worth acknowledging our perfidy. But this ending strikes me as just grotesque, a writerly trick, which reads as a message that he can do whatever he wishes with his book. Well, we as readers can't but grant him this power. But to my way of thinking, what he has done is mar a dark and beautiful creation with something unnecessary and ugly.