Idaho

2004

They never drove the truck, except once or twice a year to get firewood. It was parked just up the hill in front of the woodshed, where it collected rain in the deep dents on the hood and mosquito larvae in the rainwater. That was the way it was when Wade was married to Jenny, and that s the way it is now that he is married to Ann.

Ann goes up there sometimes to sit in the truck. She waits until Wade is busy, so that he won t notice that she s gone. Today, she comes here under the pretense of getting firewood, dragging a blue sled over the mud and grass and patches of snow. The woodshed isn t far from the house, but it s hidden from view by a stand of ponderosa pines. She feels like she is trespassing, like none of this is hers to see.

The truck is parked on a rare space of flat land, an unlikely shelf carved into the mountainside. In front of the woodshed, around the truck, a few loose bricks lie here and there in the grass and snow. Spindles of mangled wire lean against the trees. Hanging from a long larch limb are two thick ropes that sway opposite each other now, but look as if they might have once been connected by a flat board ­a child s swing.

It is March, sunny and cold. Ann gets into the driver s seat and shuts the door quietly. She pulls the seatbelt across her body, then rolls the window down so that several droplets splatter on her lap. She touches the wet spots with her fingertip, connecting them with lines in her mind to make a picture on her thigh. The picture reminds her of a mouse, or at least a child s drawing of a mouse, with a triangle face and a long, curlicued tail. Nine years ago, when Wade was still married to Jenny and both of his daughters were still alive, a mouse had crawled along the top of the truck s exhaust pipe into the engine compartment, and built its nest on the manifold. She thinks of how strange it is that Wade probably remembers that mouse, remembers the sound of it skittering under the hood, and yet he s

Emily Ruskovich grew up in the mountains of northern Idaho. She graduated from the University of Montana and received an MA in English from the University of New Brunswick, Canada, and an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. She was the 2011 2012 James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her fiction has appeared in Zoetrope, One Story, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. She was a 2015 winner of the O. Henry Award for her story Owl.

You know you re in masterly hands here. [Emily] Ruskovich s language is itself a consolation, as she subtly posits the troubling thought that only decency can save us. . . . Ruskovich s novel will remind many readers of the great Idaho novel, Marilynne Robinson s Housekeeping. . . .  [A] wrenching and beautiful book. The New York Times Book Review

Sensuous, exquisitely crafted. The Wall Street Journal

The first thing you should know about Idaho, the shatteringly original debut by O. Henry Prize winner Emily Ruskovich, is that it upturns everything you think you know about story. . . . You could read Idaho just for the sheer beauty of the prose, the expert way Ruskovich makes everything strange and yet absolutely familiar. . . . She startles with images so fresh, they make you see the world anew. . . . Idaho s brilliance is in its ability to not tie up the threads of narrative, and still be consummately rewarding. The novel reminds us that some things we just cannot know in life but we can imagine them, we can feel them and, perhaps, that can be enough to heal us. San Francisco Chronicle

Mesmerizing . . . [an] eerie story about what the heart is capable of fathoming and what the hand is capable of executing. Marie Claire

Idaho is a wonderful debut. Ruskovich knows how to build a page-turner from the opening paragraph. Ft. Worth Star-Telegram

Ruskovich s debut is haunting, a portrait of an unusual family and a state that becomes a foreboding figure in her vivid depiction. The Huffington Post

Poetic and razor sharp, Idaho is a mystery in more ways than one. . . . Ruskovich s prose is lyrical but keen, a poem that never gets lost in its own rhythm . . . with a Marilynne Robinson-like emphasis on the private, painfully human contemplation going on inside the characters brains. The result is writing as bruisingly beautiful as the Idaho landscape in which the story takes place.