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A reoccurring conflict in The Mountain and the Fathers is one of character versus society, Joe Wilkins versus the Big Dry community. Joe knows he's different then most of the folks around him. The ranch is sold and everyone is "heartbroken" except for Joe. He already knew he had no desire to stay on the ranch. This was different because most of what his community did was ranch and it was odd when someone who grows up on a ranch doesn't stay on one (Wilkins 99). Another way Joe doesn't fit in with his community is that he enjoys school. He gets teased about reading all the time and writing essays. Joe even gets teased by an adult when he is out with his friends. The man says, "You ought to be home studying or something" (Wilkins 123).

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The Mountain and the Fathers explores the life of boys and men in the unforgiving, harsh world north of the Bull Mountains of eastern Montana in a drought afflicted area called the Big Dry, a land that chews up old and young alike. Joe Wilkins was born into this world, raised by a young mother and elderly grandfather following the untimely death of his father. That early loss stretches out across the Big Dry, and Wilkins uses his own story and those of the young boys and men growing up around him to examine the violence, confusion, and rural poverty found in this distinctly American landscape. Ultimately, these lives put forth a new examination of myth and manhood in the American west and cast a journalistic eye on how young men seek to transcend their surroundings in the search for a better life. Rather than dwell on grief or ruin, Wilkins' memoir posits that it is our stories that sustain us, and The Mountain and The Fathers, much like the work of Norman MacClean or Jim Harrison, heralds the arrival of an instant literary classic.

***A 2012 Montana Book Award Honor Book***

***Finalist for the 2013 Orion Book Award***

***Winner of the 2014 GLCA New Writers Award in Nonfiction***

Joe Wilkins writes his truths straight from the broken heart of a broken land. When I read his personal stories, so lyrically and wondrously imagined, I feel a beautiful and sometimes terrifying emotion rise up in me-mythic, redemptive, and sustaining. If you want to read what matters, read this. -Kim Barnes, author of In the Kingdom of Men and In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country

Joe Wilkins grew up hard in the middle of nowhere-the bent-back, make-do world of the driest, loneliest country in all Montana-and after reading this memoir about the West, about myth, about manhood, about grief and transcendence, I felt at once heartbroken and hopeful and ultimately awed by his ability to twist sentences like barbed wire, his voice wondrously rich with dirt-and-gravel poetry. -Benjamin Percy, author of The Wilding and Refresh, Refresh

Joe Wilkins grew up on the enormous plains of eastern Montana. He found plenty to respect and revere and plenty to escape. And he learned the stories and how to tell them. The Mountain and the Fathers is vivid and compelling. We're reading it in Montana in order to understand ourselves. And for the pure pleasure we find in the storytelling. -William Kittredge, author of Owning It All and A Hole in the Sky

Joe Wilkins' sketches of life in Montana's Big Dry country, north of Billings and halfway to nowhere, are filled with a potent combination of loving poetry and bitter nostalgia. You can smell the sage and wild onions and feel how this land apart forms and twists those who live there, and sometimes kills them. Wilkins' search for his father -and for himself - takes its own twist: the Big Dry may care nothing for pilgrims and father seekers, but it marks its own as surely as a father marks a son. -John N. Maclean, son of Norman Maclean and author of Fire on the Mountain

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The Mountain and the Fathers explores the life of boys and men in the unforgiving, harsh world north of the Bull Mountains of eastern Montana in a drought afflicted area called the Big Dry, a land that chews up old and young alike. Joe Wilkins was born into this world, raised by a young mother and...

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I give The Mountain and the Fathers 3.5/5 stars because it was kind of an interesting story but it was hard to get through and had an awkward plot line. However, I think once I started to get more into it, it got better. The first half of the book is more scattered. The second half has longer stories that flow together better.

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One theme I interpreted from The Mountain and the Fathers is that no matter how far you go, family is always there. I say this because Joe did a lot of drinking, smoking, and hanging out with an 'interesting' crowd and his grandfather never shunned him, he just acted like normal and expected him to be up in the morning for work. Joe's mother was also always there for Joe to talk too, she never turned away.

A second theme that was strong in The Mountain and the Fathers is that no matter where you are placed and in what situation you are in, you can get anywhere you want if you put your mind to it. Joe was placed in lowly old Montana, working on a dusty ranch and going to a tiny school, yet he had big dreams. He dreamed of of getting out of Montana and going to college and he never gave up on that dream, he made it happen himself.

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Joe Wilkins retells the unique story of his childhood in The Mountain and the Fathers. Joe grew up in Montana, where the weather is merciless, the living conditions atrocious, and the suicide rate high. The Mountain and the Fathers shows how Joe and the people around him attempt to cope with their difficult and confusing lives.

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"And sometimes it struck not us, but what we loved: After my father died, my grandfather, who was one of the last of the old-time cowboys to ride the Comanche Flats before barbed wire, who deeply knew and dearly loved this land, sold the family ranch. And then he told us boys a new story: He told us we would leave this place and go off to college" (Wilkins 146).
-Joe Wilkins
This quote is meaningful because it shows how great the change is for Joe and his family once their livelihood, their ranch, is taken away.

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"I have lived all my life on these Montana plains, and it has somehow never been enough...in the stories my mother and grandfather tell me, in the books I read, there are other ways to live in the world, other worlds" (Wilkins 131).
-Joe Wilkins
This quote is meaningful because it shows Joe's longing to be somewhere else, to make something of himself.

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The genre of The Mountain and the Fathers is biography. It is a biography because Joe wrote it himself about his life experiences from his past.

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The author of The Mountain and the Fathers is Joe Wilkins, seen below.

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I think that the cover of the book is like this because Montana is "big sky country" and it shows the openness and plainness of Joe's surroundings. I believe that the boy on the cover is Joe.

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“Joe Wilkins.” Joewilkins.org, 2018, raggedpointroad.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/cropped-joe-wilkins-serious.jpg.

“The Mountain and the Fathers Book Cover.” Joewilkins.org, 2018, joewilkins.org/themountainandthefathers/.

“The Mountain and the Fathers.” Joewilkins.org, 14 Aug. 2018, joewilkins.org/themountainandthefathers/.

“Quote by Deborah Roberts.” Quotefancy.com, Quotefancy, 2018, quotefancy.com/quote/1669773/Deborah-Roberts-Aim-high-work-hard-and-love-your-family.

Wilkins, Joe. The Mountain and The Fathers: Growing Up on the Big Dry. Counterpoint, 2012.