WheatgrassPublishing.com        Books by Kent Elliott
Wheatgrass Publishing
  • Home
  • Kent's Blog
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Blog
  • Blog
  • Blog
Picture

Available Now: $15.00 paperback, $2.99 Kindle.

​<-- click on cover pictures for Amazon sales pages.

  A Song for Highway 12

Stories in fiction and memory from life along US Route 12. 

                    From the book cover --- 
As I began to put this collection together, I consulted an Imagined Reader:
 
  Where on Highway 12 should my stories begin?
“At the beginning, of course. Duh.”
  That’s my dilemma. Where is the beginning? Is it Michigan? or is it 1947?
“Whatever. Just get on with it.”
  Okay. I was born in a working class suburb south of Chicago…
“No, no, no. This isn’t your fifth grade autobiography assignment. Sheesh.”
  Aha. You see my problem, then. Where or when? Shall I begin farthest west, with Oregon college days at a location uncomfortably close to my 100 mile limit? Or do we open with Walla Walla childhood stories, on the route, but on the stretch west of the Bitterroot Mountains that only became US Highway 12 later on?
“Later on?”
  I explain that and the 100 mile limit in a preface and within a story or two. No need here.
“Stories? Is this more of your made-up stories? I thought it would be memories.”
  It’s both. Memories, imagined, made-up from memory as I imagine it. The line between is fuzzy.
“Fuzzy?”
  I mean there’s not a clear distinction. We all like stories, so I offer some true; some fiction; some fiction that might be true, and vice versa.


Picture
It's Not About You, Wally:
the traveling memoir of a solitary white man

$15.00 softcover. $2.99 Kindle e-book. 282 pages.

​​Wally is a "refugee from a wealthy family" (hat tip to Joni Mitchell for that line). He travels. He’s on a journey in search of the place where he can truly belong. His memoir travels along journeys of geography and remembrance as he figures out what lies ahead. He’d rather be alone, all the while needing a special person to journey with him.

Wally tells his story. If you ask him, it is all about Wally, Others have                    something to say about that. Naturally, the  book is about Wally. Will he ever                                                   recognize that maybe, just maybe, “It’s not about you, W
ally?”

Available at Shakespeare & Co. and Fact & Fiction Books, both in downtown Missoula, Montana.

Picture

​I've Seen Dry
​$15.00 softcover. $2.99 Kindle e-book. 222 pp.

​This historical novel reaches back from 1981 small town life in eastern Montana, to an event in 1918 as remembered by two elderly nursing home residents. Something happened along the North Dakota - Montana border in 1918. A man died then. The crisis left something that would influence the way of life in the rural community sixty years later.

Part mystery, part political history with the Nonpartisan League, it is a small town story moving at small town pace. Looking for a summer "beach read"? Yeah, this'll provide a couple enjoyable afternoons.  

Available from Fact & Fiction Books, Missoula; Aunt Bonnie's, Leslie's Hallmark, and Montana Historical Society Museum Store, all in Helena.

​


Picture
The Shallows of Jabbok
$15.00 softcover. $2.99 Kindle e-book. 244 pp.​
​
There are things we don’t talk about. The subjects change and knowledge grows, so that there are things once hidden that we speak about openly today. We may forget just how hidden from view, just how difficult to address, some topics once were. THE SHALLOWS OF JABBOK re-visits an earlier time with some rural folks trying to live authentic lives. Even when it meant not talking about certain things because those folks did not talk about them.

The settlers along Jabbok Creek found ways to live and love, to survive or succumb, doing the best they could, dealing as well as they could with things they didn’t understand; sometimes well, sometimes painfully, sometimes                                                         fatally. Mrs. Rainwater tells her story of earlier days in a sparsely populated                                                     region. It is a story of love and a lack of love which is not hate, of sorrow and                                                   joy, of hardship and ease,  of loss and fulfillment.

Available at Leslie's and Aunt Bonnie's, Helena. Your favorite local bookseller will be happy to get it for you..

​

Picture
The Deerhide Creek Mine Disaster & Other Stories
$10.00 softcover; Kindle e-book $1.00. 177 pages.​
This volume of short fiction includes a ghost story (possibly), a murder mystery novella (a novella is a short novel but longer than a novelette), a few stabs at poetry, and short stories of other odd sorts. As you read, at some point along the way, you’ll likely say, “yup”, “nope”, “hmm” and/or “really?”. The author knows where you’ll respond, “that’s a depressing thought,” but that part of the book is quite short. 

Unsure about the book? Start your reading with the novella, The Bursar's Calculation--the last story in the book. You'll like the characters and get to solve the mystery puzzle.


"Some stories include certain words that some may find offensive. That's the way those characters talk, so I couldn't help it." – KHE

​


Picture
Mining Our Moments, by Franklin Elliott
$10.00 softcover
Frank Elliott wrote in his preface:
"Embedded in the moments of our years are rich veins of meaning ready to be mined. The form in which the incidents reported here are explored is an effort to develop a process by which the mining can be accomplished. This process moves toward a view which sees the human condition as an integration of at least the artistic, the scientific and the religious experiences into a personal reality. ...
"To live personally on our planet is the goal: to be human, a creative spirit in the family of life.

Proudly powered by Weebly