Book
Description
Kansas-born Grace
Stone was a young teacher in the mining cit of Butte,
Montana, when she married Henderson Coates in 1910. They
moved to the fledgling town of Martinsdale, Montana,
where Henderson and his brother built a general store.
Coates wrote her father that she had been brought into ‘an alien land.’ Although
Coates lived in the Musselshell Valley for the next 55
years, she always felt a soul apart.
Coated found another
life in her writing. From about 1920 until 1935, Coates
immersed herself in poetry, short stories, and letters.
She published two books of poetry and an acclaimed novel, ‘Black Cherries.’ The
poetry is passionate, the short stories are intense and
revealing, but it is in the spontaneity of her letters
where the real story of Coates is found. She remarked it
was ‘her soul’s delight – spreading myself
on letters.’
Historian
Lee Rostad has skillfully edited this rich legacy of correspondence
into an intimate biography. It is an adventure to find the
real person behind the demure housewife who wrote the local
news for the county newspapers and who hunted and fished
with her husband.
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