For release upon receipt

Contact: Chris Cauble, 406-449-0200

Email ccauble@riverbendpublishing.com

Writer’s life revealed in intimate letters

Women will be drawn to the highly praised biography of “Black Cherries” author Grace Stone Coates, but anyone interested in literature will be rewarded by this personal portrait of a housewife who lived two lives, the ordinary and the brilliant, in a small Montana town.

“Grace Stone Coates: Her Life in Letters” (Riverbend) by Lee Rostad is “a richly textured and deeply insightful biography of one of Montana’s, and this nation’s, finest writers,” said Rick Newby, editor of “The New Montana Story.”

Mary Clearman Blew, author of “All But the Waltz” and “Bone Deep in Landscape,” said, “Grace Stone Coates’ poetry and fiction at last is becoming available to the wide reading audience that it deserves, thanks to Lee Rostad’s meticulous research and determination. This book is an invaluable source for anyone interested in women’s writing, regional writing, fine writing.”

Grace Stone was a young teacher in the rough-and-tumble mining city of Butte, Montana, when she married Henderson Coates in 1910. They moved to the fledgling town of Martinsdale, where Henderson and his brother built a general store. Of the move, Coates wrote 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.

Coates 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 the 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.”

From her small town, Coates had a long correspondence with William Saroyan (“The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze”), a young man in San Francisco who became one of America’s most celebrated writers and who always credited Coates with influencing his work. She regularly exchanged letters with Montana literary lion H.G. Merriam, Native American writer Frank Bird Linderman, Charles M. Russell art historian James Rankin, and others. Coates died in Bozeman in 1976 at the age of 94.

Coates’ historian Lee Rostad, who previously wrote about Grace Stone Coates in her book “Honey Wine and Hunger Root,” 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.

“Grace Stone Coates: Her Life in Letters” is available at bookstores and by calling Riverbend Publishing, 1-866-787-2363. The 338-page book is available in hardcover for $26.95 or paperback for $19.95.

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About the Author

Like her subject, author Lee Rostad of White Sulphur Springs, Montana, took her turn at writing the local news for the weekly newspapers and took time from her ranch and cooking chores to write magazine articles. In addition to “Honey Wine and Hunger Root,” Rostad has written “Fourteen Cents and Seven Green Apples,” and “Mountains of Gold, Hills of Grass.” She is co-author of “Meagher County Sketchbook.” In 1995, Rostad received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Rocky Mountain College and in 2001 received the Governor’s Award in Humanities. She currently serves on the Montana Historical Society Board of Trustees.

Press releases and related documents may be downloaded at www.riverbendpublishing.com. Go to the book description and click on “Press releases.” Or send an email to ccauble@riverbendpublishing.com.