Overview

Bronze Medal Winner for Midwest Best Regional Fiction: 2022 IPPY Awards Life has always been difficult and dangerous for those living on and around the Turtle Mountain Reservation. Everyone has a story. Everyone has a secret. Everyone thinks they're only connected to their neighbors by the backwater town they share. Orphaned Sioux Ida Florence Little Shay is determined to escape the life before her, but her course of action only draws her into a world of increasing conflict and deepening poverty. Young Fawn Breen appears as if she is from a different century. With her primitive, animalistic father as her only companion, she is forced to look after herself when she is thrust into society. Harold Peavey is an idealistic young man who finds his views of the world in severe conflict with those around him, facing ostracism by his community when he refuses to abandon his beliefs. Enduring mistakes, tragedies, secrets, and long-held grudges spanning the 1930s-1960s that have permanently marked them, these three Great Plains farm families clash together as they struggle to survive and find their way in an ever-changing world.

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9781643972404

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Reviews

engrossing... Through unflinching narration, Eller submerges readers into the bleak, but lushly imagined, inner worlds of the Little Shays, the Breens, the Morinvilles, and the Peaveys, as they grapple with each other for primacy of place and survival. -Debra Marquart, author of The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere a thoughtful yet passionate, densely woven tableau of interconnected lives and eras in the tradition of Sherwood Anderson; Gary Eller brings a lifetime's care and an artist's eye to his magnum opus-a shivery swirl of adventure provoking double-takes of recognition: They are us. Rich, funny, moving, and wise. -Joan Frank, author of The Outlook for Earthlings sad, mysterious, tender, sometimes hilarious and occasionally savage. But they all have a couple of things in common: real-as-life characters you'll want to spend time with, and an elegant readability that will make that time go much too fast. -Jim Nichols, author of Blue Summer, winner of the 2021 Maine Fiction Award Funny, compelling, and often disturbing, True North introduces us to characters who endure despite poverty and cruel Fate, and we cheer for them because of and despite their desperation. This novel shows us a new angry Eller, and it's a justified anger in the tradition of Ed Abbey and Kurt Vonnegut. -Hank Nuwer, author of Sons of the Dawn True North will quickly jerk you by the roots from the tranquil prairie grasses into a world of mystery, murder and intrigue. Eller's depth of detail and description takes you smoothly through the sights, sounds and fragrances of an uncovered world. -Dennis R. Waller, author of Walkin' Joe and the Midnight Marauders Like Toni Morrison, Gary Eller knows salvation is always the motive, whether the crime is murder-or love. -Paul M. Hedeen, author of The Butterfly

engrossing... Through unflinching narration, Eller submerges readers into the bleak, but lushly imagined, inner worlds of the Little Shays, the Breens, the Morinvilles, and the Peaveys, as they grapple with each other for primacy of place and survival. -Debra Marquart, author of The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere a thoughtful yet passionate, densely woven tableau of interconnected lives and eras in the tradition of Sherwood Anderson; Gary Eller brings a lifetime's care and an artist's eye to his magnum opus-a shivery swirl of adventure provoking double-takes of recognition: They are us. Rich, funny, moving, and wise. -Joan Frank, author of The Outlook for Earthlings sad, mysterious, tender, sometimes hilarious and occasionally savage. But they all have a couple of things in common: real-as-life characters you'll want to spend time with, and an elegant readability that will make that time go much too fast. -Jim Nichols, author of Blue Summer, winner of the 2021 Maine Fiction Award Funny, compelling, and often disturbing, True North introduces us to characters who endure despite poverty and cruel Fate, and we cheer for them because of and despite their desperation. This novel shows us a new angry Eller, and it's a justified anger in the tradition of Ed Abbey and Kurt Vonnegut. -Hank Nuwer, author of Sons of the Dawn True North will quickly jerk you by the roots from the tranquil prairie grasses into a world of mystery, murder and intrigue. Eller's depth of detail and description takes you smoothly through the sights, sounds and fragrances of an uncovered world. -Dennis R. Waller, author of Walkin' Joe and the Midnight Marauders ...I was fully immersed in the narrative...it is a beautiful, aching book. -The San Francisco Book Review True North vaults Gary Eller's novel into the status of a North Dakota main event and an earned place on bookstore shelves with distinguished authors Louise Erdrich, Wallace Stegner, and Gerald Haslam. -University of Nebraska Press

Gary Eller brings a lifetime's care and an artist's eye to his magnum opus-a shivery swirl of adventure provoking double-takes of recognition: They are us. Rich, funny, moving, and wise. -Joan Frank, author of The Outlook for Earthlings

Author Information

Gary Eller is the author of TRUE NORTH and the short fiction collection, THIN ICE AND OTHER RISKS.His writing has appeared in many publications, and he is the winner of the River City Award in Fiction, the Fowler Prize, and the Minnesota Voices Award, among others. He studied at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, where he earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and he is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives and writes in Ames, Iowa, while spending part of each summer in his family's cabin on scenic Lake Upsilon in the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota, the area where most of TRUE NORTH is set.

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