Idaho (Ruskovich)

Idaho 
Emily Ruskovich, 2017
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812994049


Summary
 A stunning debut novel about love and forgiveness, about the violence of memory and the equal violence of its loss—from O. Henry Prize–winning author Emily Ruskovich.

Ann and Wade have carved out a life for themselves from a rugged landscape in northern Idaho, where they are bound together by more than love.

With her husband’s memory fading, Ann attempts to piece together the truth of what happened to Wade’s first wife, Jenny, and to their daughters.

In a story written in exquisite prose and told from multiple perspectives—including Ann, Wade, and Jenny, now in prison—we gradually learn of the mysterious and shocking act that fractured Wade and Jenny's lives, of the love and compassion that brought Ann and Wade together, and of the memories that reverberate through the lives of every character in Idaho.

In a wild emotional and physical landscape, Wade’s past becomes the center of Ann’s imagination, as Ann becomes determined to understand the family she never knew—and to take responsibility for them, reassembling their lives, and her own. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Hoodoo Mountain in Idaho
• Education—B.A., University of Montana; M.A., University of New Brunswick, Canada;
   M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Awards—O. Henry Award
• Currently—lives in Denver, Colorado.


Emily Ruskovich is an American author, whose debut novel, Idaho, was published in 2016 to wide acclaim. She grew up in the Hoodoo Mountains in the Panhandle of northern Idaho.

Ruskovich received her B.A. from the University of Montana, her M.A. in English from the University of New Brunswick and an M.F.A from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She was the 2011–2012 James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In 2015, she won an O. Henry Award for her story “Owl.” Her fiction has appeared in Zoetrope, One Story, and Virginia Quarterly Review.  Ruskovich currently teaches at the University of Colorado in Denver. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
With an act of unspeakable violence at its heart, Idaho…is about not only loss, grief and redemption, but also, most interestingly, the brutal disruptions of memory…Ruskovich's language is itself a consolation, as she subtly posits the troubling thought that only decency can save us. When that decency expresses itself—in dozens of portraits of a missing girl, in the epiphanies of a prison poetry class—an ennobling dignity begins to suggest that a deep goodness might be a match for our madness. In any case, that's the best we're going to get. Idaho is also a very Northwestern book. Thoughts eddy here as they do in Jim Harrison's work, and Ruskovich's novel will remind many readers of the great Idaho novel, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping.
Smith Henderson - New York Times Book Review


Sensuous, exquisitely crafted.
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.
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.
A.V. Club


(Starred review.) [B]eautifully constructed.... With her amazing sentences, Ruskovich draws readers into the novel’s world...[with] well-developed voices to describe various perspectives.... Shocking and heartbreaking...a remarkable love story.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) [S]trains of a literary thriller...transform[ed] into a lyrical meditation on memory, loss, and grief in the American West.... Ruskovich builds poetry out of observing the smallest details—moments of narrative precision and clarity.... [F]illed to the brim with dazzling language, mystery, and a profound belief in the human capacity to love and seek forgiveness.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Though at the novel’s center is an act of shocking violence, this is also a story about many different kinds of love. What are these various forms of love? What role does love play in this novel, and how does love contribute to the feelings you are left with in the end?

2. When Wade’s memory begins to fail, Ann endures humiliation and physical pain because of his actions, which, to someone outside of the relationship, would look like domestic abuse. Discuss the ways in which she copes with these episodes. How does Ann interpret these acts of violence, and what does that say about her as a character? Did you feel nervous and uncomfortable about the fine line she is walking between her love and her safety?

3. What are other examples of sacrifice in this novel?

4. Consider the structure of the book: the shifting narrative voices and the shifting timeline, spanning nearly fifty years. How does the book’s structure influence your understanding of each character and his or her story? Discuss also the inclusion of minor perspectives, such as the bloodhound and Eliot.

5. What role does art play in this story? Consider music, painting, and poetry. How do you understand Tom Clark’s motivations?

6. Near the end of the novel, Ann remembers learning about the history of Idaho’s name. How does this history inform her own life? Why is Idaho the title of this novel? Discuss also the role the landscape plays in the interior lives of all the characters. How would you characterize this landscape?

7. Female friendship and sisterhood are major themes. Discuss the various relationships between the female characters, including the children. Is female friendship the saving grace of this story?

8. How do you interpret the act of violence that is at the heart of this story? Do you feel that Ann’s interpretation is correct? Do you feel the novel provides an absolute answer? Why do you think the author chose to tell only as much as she did?

9. Do you sympathize with Jenny, in spite of what she’s done? Why or why not? If you had to choose only one moment in the story that characterized Jenny, would it be her act of violence, or something else? How do you think she understands herself?

10. Are you surprised by the end of Ann’s story? Jenny’s? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

top of page (summary)