Winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award for Best First Novel and the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award for Best Novel In Winter Range , the intimate details of ranching and small-town life are woven into the suspenseful story of three people struggling to survive, to belong, and to love in the chillingly bleak landscape of eastern Montana. Ike Parsons is a small-town sheriff whose life is stable and content; his wife Pattiann is a rancher's daughter with a secret past. But when Ike tries to help a hard-luck cattleman named Chas Stubblefield, he triggers Chas's resentment and finds his home and his wife targeted by a plot for revenge. “Fresh and provocative...Davis's literary ethos rivals Larry Watson, Kent Haruf and Ivan Doig.” ― Ron Franscell, San Francisco Chronicle “Brilliant, beautifully written...Davis's skill brings wintry Montana alive.” ― Kirkus Reviews (starred) “Wonderful...her story races toward a gripping, ice-bound tragedy.” ― Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor “Impressive...Davis writes so well.” ― Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today “A fine first novel....with lyrical precision, Davis describes a way of life in which actions are more eloquent than words.” ― The New Yorker “Davis...vividly teaches her readers something new... fresh and unexpected every time.” ― Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times “Penetrating, and heart-wrenching detail... Davis has pictured the region and its peoples with such credible vividness that her images speak for themselves.” ― San Diego Tribune “[A] wonderfully strange story...an unflinching portrait of a way of life indebted to nature.” ― Louise Jarvis, The New York Times Book Review “This is a novel of social class and dreadful climate, Americans in desperate circumstances trying--and sometimes failing--to live peaceful lives.” ― Carolyn See, Washington Post Claire Davis is the author of Season of the Snake and Winter Range, which won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award for Best First Novel and the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award for Best Novel. Her stories have appeared in The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, and Ploughshares, been read on National Public Radio's Selected Shorts program, and been selected for the Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Price anthologies. She lives in Lewiston, Idaho. Winter Range By Claire Davis Picador USA Copyright © 2003 Claire Davis All right reserved. ISBN: 9780312284251 Chapter One The sheriff, Ike Parsons, stood at the curb, zipped his coat closed tohis throat, and knocked the snow clear of his hat. A truck rolledpast, hit a glazed patch in the street, and did a little sideways slide andjiggle. The driver ducked his head to the sheriff as if apologizing, andthen the truck straightened and moved on. It was a year of big snow forthis small town, in the corner of Montana, eastern edge of what wasknown as the hi-line to the locals-a corridor of high desert, along oldHighway Two, bisecting the northern tier of the state. Just a jump fromCanada to the north and the Bearpaw Range, the Little Rockies to thedistant south. Dry land farm and ranch country?wheat, cattle.     Parsons tucked his hat over his ears, tugging the brim to a beakabove his nose. The snow fell haphazard out of the bright blue overhead,papered alike the streets and hydrants, hats and shoulders of hisfellow townsfolk. Across the street, the vet Purvis was angling his wayover a snowbank, cutting a diagonal toward Ike. He was a tall man in hisearly sixties, graying, but like many out here, ropy-muscled and fit fromdealing with livestock. He hopped the curb and a foot dipped under himso that he bobbled a moment and the sheriff snatched him under an armand steadied the older man.     "I meant to do that," Purvis said.     Parsons shrugged. "And I meant to let you fall on your ass."     The two men grinned. Purvis looked up, dodged a clump of fallingsnow, said, "Ain't this a sight? Once in a generation." Come spring the land would be rich with water, and with any luck it would signal the end of seven years of drought, but now, late winter, it was snow, burying the streets. Just outside of town?a flat-open slab of white over hardpan and scrub, a scattering of sage and cactus and greasewood punching through, a skiff of tumbleweeds dashing over the icy surface, swooping about in the wind. "You off to work?" Purvis asked. Ike stepped away. "My day off."     Purvis fell in alongside. "You get those? What the hell's the law comingto?"     Ike shook his head and a clot of snow flopped down from the brim."World's gone to the dogs, I guess." Parsons glanced in a storefront window,sucked his stomach in. At forty-two he was still a solid man, butsoftening at the edges and he did not take kindly to it. Too many sedentaryhours behind the desk, too many miles on the roads.     "So, your day off?what you got lined up?"     "Hardware store," Ike shoved his hat back, tugged at his hair. "Ste