It had been a long snowy winter and spring. The rivers were late rising, and the mountains held onto a pure white snow-cover. Rain fell upon the deep winter snow the day before the Flood of '64. Waters rose, the rivers raged. The dam failed to hold the Birch Creek flow, and broke, giving way to a wall of water and drowning the Indians. Veterinarian Alphonse Vallerone dreams out this novel of dreamers dreaming. He goes back 50 years to the day after the Flood, when he assisted the surviving Indians. Riding from one devastated ranch to another, he tends to the surviving yet devastated animals and tries to mend the grief wrought by the Flood. Underpinned by the lingering and harsh reminders of the Blackfeet Nation’s heroic, tragic, and vibrant past, Gustafson’s third novel chronicles the heartrending drama of the Blackfeet people. Swift Dam celebrates the native land and the Natives who survive as they have survived throughout time, perilously. It is the story of a veterinarian who attempts to sustain and nurture life on the land, his empathy with the living, and his sympathy for the dead and dying.

Swift Dam

Literature & Fiction

Gustafson, Sid

Literary

Open Books

• Advice for keeping your dog healthy in the backcountry, including preventative and emergency care • Descriptive photos and important points provided for easy reference • Handy, carry-along size We love bringing our dogs along on outdoor adventures, whether backpacking , hiking, or hunting, and they love coming just as much. But just like humans, our canine partners can suffer an illnesses or accidents when we’re in the backcountry, a long way from home. If your dog should seem sick, do you know how to check? What would you do if he suddenly collapsed? These and many other obvious and not so obvious health issues are described in Canine Field Medicine. Veternarian Sid Gustafson provides tips on how to examine your dog, and what to do if he’s choking, coughing, wounded, bleeding, goes lame, or has a head injury. He discusses eyes, ears, and mouth health and the first aid that’s required for things like frostbite, heat stroke, hypothermia, and sunburn. The point of every outdoor adventure is to have fun and come back safely. Being prepared for the worst is generally the best way to stack the odds of a successful outing in our favor―for humans and for our four-legged friends.

Canine Field Medicine: First Aid for Your Active Dog

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Pets & Animal Care

MOUNTAINEERS BOOKS+

Midway through Sid Gustafson's new novel, Horses They Rode, I found myself put in mind of all the second chances I have had. His take on the reknitting of family, friendship, and one man's tumultuous life is such a story--a tale of second chances where hope effervesces across a storyscape of high country, horse corrals, drunkenness, and regret that seems, at moments, irresolvable. It's a wholly American novel, for of course, America is a land forgiving of first mistakes--where a shot at trying again is fair and right.Wendel Ingraham, Gustafson's protagonist, is a ranch hand who has roamed Washington State's Inland Empire, Idaho's panhandle, and Big Sky Country on a multi-year binge, leaving a daughter and a broken marriage in his wake. A series of experiences, including encounters with a high-school sweetheart and with mentor, companion, and part-time Blackfoot medicine man Bubbles Ground Owl, leads to his sobriety and amends.Wendel and Bubbles take jobs as hands on a ranch where they worked as youths. And this is where the novel cries its message in earnest. The protagonist is never so competent as when he's reunited with his beloved horse. The symbiosis that is rediscovered between them, a language of faithfulness and trust, portends atonements awaiting Wendel. A gathering of horsemen and their mounts prompts language from Gustafson that is a gorgeous but gritty admixture of potential:"Whoever they were, whatever breed of horsemen, they brought horses and they brought hope, hope that horses could revive a manifest heart."At the ranch there are additional reconciliations required of Ingraham. In their execution, he emerges whole, ". . . grateful for all the people who'd gathered to live the life they knew best, everything and everyone connected, men and animals, fishes and birds, grass, trees and stars."As in his first novel, Prisoners of Flight, Gustafson often joyfully eschews writing conventions. By turns, his forms are starkly tangible or cloaked in mythology. His prose is exuberant and accessible. Rhythmic, he often reads like a long poem: "Parents want their children with them, children of the land, something about having your children with you on the land, native children on native land."Horses They Rode is a one-sitting book. And it's the kind of book about something important in a world full of books about unimportant things. Readers of classic Montana fiction will like it.Reviewed by Brian Ames '85Washington State Magazine Steeped in Native American spirituality and stories, Horses They Rode is a compelling tribute to contemporary ranch culture. Like his debut novel, Prisoner's of Flight, Gustafson's latest is thick with metaphor, weaving together both inner and outer journeys. By rail, by horse, and by mountain highway, Gustafson paints a magical landscape as his protagonist recreates his life and connections with others, the land and himself. Annahttp://wsm.wsu.edu/r/index.php?id=37#.Wamzv62ZNE5http://www.outsidebozeman.com/fall-2006/horses-they-rode

Horses They Rode

United States

Independently published

Two former prisoners of the Vietnam War, one an Indian from the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and the other a veterinarian, both alcoholic and psychologically scarred, reunite and fly to Montana's Glacier national Park. When they make a forced landing in the wilderness, their plane breaks a strut and they have no choice but to make camp for the winter. Eventually, they are joined by two young twin sisters who have wandered off their trail. During fierce winter storms they are marooned together in a small cabin, struggling to keep warm, find enough to eat and, hopefully, wait for a break in the weather. All four are lost, not only physically, but also psychically, and it is this unplanned intimacy, the struggle to survive, and the developing friendships that lead to the transformations that lie at the heart of this novel. Both harrowing and beautiful, Prisoners of Flight uses the power of nature and metaphor to illuminate the human condition.(

Prisoners of Flight

Contemporary

Permanent Pr Pub Co

A dramatic novel of love, family, and changing cultures along Montana s rugged Rocky Mountain Front. The novel lyrically weaves the protagonist s journey through women, children, horses, and Indian spirituality, culminating in a thrilling cross-country horse race. Gustafson's beautifully crafted writing limns the intense and complex interactions between men and women, fathers and daughters, Native Americans and whites, and animals and nature. His storytelling and language is full of rhythm and surprise. Gustafson is a Montana veterinarian who has written a previous novel (Prisoners of Flight) and a guidebook (Field Care for the Active Dog).

UNKNO

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gustafson, Sid. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Gustafson, Sid

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gustafson, Sid. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Swift Dam

Canine Field Medicine: First Aid for Your Active Dog

Horses They Rode

Prisoners of Flight

Horses They Rode