The Ploughmen
Kim Zupan, 2014
Henry, Holt & Co.
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780805099515
Summary
Steeped in a lonesome Montana landscape as unyielding and raw as it is beautiful, Kim Zupan's The Ploughmen is a new classic in the literature of the American West.
At the center of this searing, fever dream of a novel are two men—a killer awaiting trial, and a troubled young deputy—sitting across from each other in the dark, talking through the bars of a county jail cell: John Gload, so brutally adept at his craft that only now, at the age of 77, has he faced the prospect of long-term incarceration and Valentine Millimaki, low man in the Copper County sheriff’s department, who draws the overnight shift after Gload’s arrest. With a disintegrating marriage further collapsing under the strain of his night duty, Millimaki finds himself seeking counsel from a man whose troubled past shares something essential with his own.
Their uneasy friendship takes a startling turn with a brazen act of violence that yokes together two haunted souls by the secrets they share, and by the rugged country that keeps them. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 25, 1953
• Raised—near Great Falls, Montana, USA
• Education—M.F.A., University of Montana
• Currently—lives in Missoula, Montana
Kim Zupan, a native Montanan, lives in Missoula and grew up in and around Great Falls, where much of The Ploughmen is set. For twenty-five years Zupan made a living as a carpenter while pursuing his writing. He has also worked as a smelterman, pro rodeo bareback rider, ranch hand, Alaska salmon fisherman and presently teaches carpentry at Missoula College. He holds an MFA from the University of Montana. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Set in northern Montana, the novel presents a powerful and implacable landscape, all dry soil and fractured river breaks…Zupan is also a carpenter, and he writes with the precision of his trade. He does not shy away from themes of innocence or guilt. Neither does he exploit those themes in the service of melodrama. Riffing on the rhythms of Cormac McCarthy, he composes vivid scenes of tenderness and manipulation between the two men. Millimaki and Gload develop a jailhouse relationship that is convincing, and harrowing…The book features plenty of suspense. What it offers in addition are Zupan's considerable skills with description and mood…The Ploughmen is a dark and imaginative debut.
Alyson Hagy - New York Times Book Review
Mr. Zupan produces pleasurably lush and baroque prose, especially when describing his setting’s awesome and unforgiving topography.
Wall Street Journal
Passionately arresting… Even though Zupan’s novel deals with grim topics, he plows the depths of grief and numbness with such a concentrated dedication that the prose is a character in itself. His sentences are unleashed in a furious splendor… bleak and brilliant—the best kind of book.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Stunning…A remarkable novel... It's almost hard to believe that it’s a debut…. It's a portrait of the West as a sometimes desolate and cold place, full of possibility, maybe, but also full of danger from every corner. It's a modern West, caught between the romance of the frontier and the mundane, harsh realities of living in the present day United States. And it’s absolutely beautiful, from its tragic opening scene to its tough, necessary end. Zupan is an unsparing writer, but also a generous, deeply compassionate one.
NPR
The expansive, indifferent and lonely landscapes that populate the book are as vital as the two main characters and elevate Mr. Zupan’s work from a story about an unlikely friendship to a solemn exploration of the human soul—and how it is formed by the space that surrounds it.
Pittsburg Post-Gazette
Gripping… a strong debut for a talented wordsmith…. Zupan has that rare skill and we as readers are better off for it.
Montana Magazine
We know we are in the hands of a master storyteller from the very first pages of Kim Zupan’s powerful, beautifully crafted debut novel The Ploughmen…. The searing, lyrical prose, relentless violence, and tenuous moments of reprieve are reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy and Flannery O’Connor…. The disturbing yet quietly redemptive finale to this gripping and psychologically nuanced tale leaves the reader satisfied. Bravo, Mr. Zupan.
Montana Quarterly
Nuanced…fascinating…What Zupan offers is a superb, retro prose style, channeling William Faulkner in long passages engorged with vocabulary, and meditations on what it means to be alive, if barely, in rural Montana circa 1980…a rich, morose meditation on death, law enforcement, and friendship.
BookPage
It would be too simple to say The Ploughmen centers on the idea of good and evil; it is not so black and white as that. The story is perpetually gray, with pockets of light and dark, not just in its morality but in its scenery…. [Zupan] writes with a kind of straightforwardness reminiscent of Kerouac. This memorable debut is at times strikingly beautiful, while at others quite bleak, but it is always poignant.
Booklist
[A] riveting debut….A fascinating first novel that examines the complexities of two men, opposites in every way, whose lives nevertheless intertwine. With such a strong debut, Zupan’s literary future looks exceptionally promising.
Library Journal
Serial killer bonds with cop in a first novel with a high body count.... Val Millimaki...has been given the graveyard shift to guard [Gload] and pry loose details of old crimes. The two discover they were both farm kids, plowing the fields.... It's not the paucity of action but the flawed characterizations that hurt this oppressive work the most.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The lonely, expansive Montanan countryside looms large in The Ploughmen. What does North American rural life represent to John and Valentine? How does it affect their relationship?
2. Deputy Valentine’s guilty conscience over the victims he has not been able to save weighs heavily on him. How is this related to Valentine finding his mother’s body after her suicide? What do you think he’s really looking for as he searches for the victims?
3. When talking to Valentine, the sheriff wonders aloud why John opens up to him: “Just hates cops like all get-out. But he talks to you.” Valentine answers, “We talk about farming.” What other reasons do you think John opened up to Valentine and not to any other officers who were on duty?
4. What is the significance of the book’s title?
5. To combat insomnia, John would revisit his past, thinking of his favorite plowing field and his fond, monotonous memories from the tractor seat. Sometimes in this dream he would envision gulls coming to feast on infant mice. He could not parse them out, try as he might, and their screaming would keep him from sleep. What might the seagulls symbolize?
6. In chapter four John told Valentine that there are not many things he regrets. And he’s not exactly eaten up by the few things he does regret. Do you find this to be true? Why or why not?
7. John admitted to Valentine that though he had many opportunities to kill him, he spared him for the sake of their friendship. Why do you think John spared Valentine’s life?
8. Near the novel’s end, John is languishing in prison. How do you think he perceives death at this point in his life?
9. Valentine and John both have troubled relationships with women. Valentine’s marriage to Glenda is on the rocks, he’s distant from his sister, and he is still haunted by his mother’s suicide. John, as well, has complicated feelings about Francie. Discuss the roles of female characters in the book and how they’ve affected these men.
10. In her letters to Val, his sister saves questions about their mother for the post script. Each question hits Val like a gut punch. Why do you think it’s so hard for him to connect with his sister?
11. The female characters in the novel constantly search for something more or feel their current world is not enough—whether it was Valentine’s mother looking for a way out, or Glenda’s yearning for something outside her marriage and the house she and Valentine shared, to Francie seeking companionship that John couldn’t provide. What are your thoughts about the isolation these women felt in a predominantly male, rural environment? What do you think the author is trying to say about gender roles in this particular world?
12. In chapter one when Francie is introduced, John imagined Francie’s spirit fluttering among moths as they battered themselves against the window screen, which he identified as small souls seeking the freedom of the greater world. Do you think he envisioned a normal life with her? Do you think John always knew Francie’s fate, or was this something he had recently decided?
13. Discuss the end of The Ploughmen. Do you feel more or less empathetic towards John now that you know his story? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)