Waiting for the Revolution
A Montana Memoir
by Jo Anne Salisbury Troxel

published by Jo Anne Salisbury Troxel

produced by Sweetgrass Books

  • Love and politics: what could be more spellbinding? Born during the radical era of early 20th century politics, author Jo Anne Salisbury Troxel is the product of a tumultuous affair between her idealistic mother and the infamous Communist sheriff of Plentywood, Montana. This engrossing memoir explores her complicated family history, the hardscrabble life carved out by the inhabitants of Montana's eastern plains, and the challenges faced by three often parentless children whose only option for survival was to band together.

    Troxel spent her first eight years in eastern Montana and knew her father, Rodney Salisbury, for only five years before his unexpected death, but her life was forever haunted by her mother Marie's reminisces ”tinted with nostalgia and sorrow” of her revolutionary life and love in Plentywood. So it was that the endless scope and volatile ways of the high plains and the specter of Sheriff Salisbury became as present for Jo Anne as her mother's inescapable grief and the ensuing years of occasional abundance and persistent scarcity on the Salish Kootenai reservation in Arlee, Montana.

    In vignettes both touching and tragic, Waiting for the Revolution relates a deeply personal story of love and loss set against the backdrop of the rise and fall of the Communist Party in eastern Montana. Joanne's poignant narrative of her parents' star-crossed affair, its consequences, and her own turbulent youth in and around Arlee is cathartic and unforgettable.


240 pages, 6 x 9, Perfect Bound

softcover
ISBN 10: 1591522579
ISBN 13: 9781591522577
$17.95

RELEASE DATE
12/23/2019

 

 

 

 


Waiting for the Revolution
A Montana Memoir

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Jo Anne Salisbury Troxel is a third-generation Montanan who grew up on the Flathead/Salish/Kootenai reservation at Arlee, Montana. She received her undergraduate and masters degree from Montana State University. She also attended summer school for seven years at Christ Church, Oxford, England. She retired from Headwaters Academy in Bozeman in the spring of 2003, where as head of the English Department, she organized an innovative program for the high school. Previous to that, she taught English and creative writing for twenty-three years at Bozeman Senior High School, as well as conducting writing workshops in Bozeman and around the state.

She is a grassroots organizer and activist, and over the years has been involved with social issues such as women's rights, the environment, and universal health. She helped organize the local Gallatin Valley Human Rights Task Force. Most recently, she has been on the advisory board of KGVM, Gallatin Valley Community Radio. She is also active in the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Bozeman. She is a passionate supporter of the arts and served on the Montana Arts Council for several years, and was also president of Beall Park Art Center, relocated now to the Emerson Cultural Center. She is still writing.

Praise for Waiting for the Revolution: A Montana Memoir


"I have always appreciated Jo Anne Troxel's talent for telling a story, whether I'm listening to it at her kitchen table or reading it in this vivid memoir. She creates the landscape of her place and lets you live there, sharing the passions and struggles of her fractured Montana family, where narratives become a crucial part of the healing. Our split America needs more stories like this."

-GREG KEELER, retired Montana State University English professor and author of  many books of poetry, including his latest: Bluebird Run




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