CHESTER, CT/OLD LYME—UPDATED WITH CORRECTED TIME: On Sunday, March 23, at 1 p.m., Congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek hosts a Books & Bagels featuring Old Lyme resident Amy Gamerman and her newly-published and already highly-acclaimed book, The Crazies: The Cattleman, the Wind Prospector, and a War Out West.
Acclaimed author and playwright Lary Bloom will discuss with Gamerman how she came to write the book and more.
The true story of conflict over competing interests in the rangeland of Montana, The Crazies has a remarkable cast, a setting as compelling as any you’d see on the screen, and a story line that would hold the most critical viewer’s attention from beginning to end.
But the book is not fiction—it is based on hard, solid fact and is, as such, truly a tale for our times.
Most locals in Big Timber, Montana learn to live with the wind. Rick Jarrett sought his fortune in it. Like his pioneer ancestors who staked their claims in the Treasure State, he believed in his right to make a living off the land—and its newest precious resource, million-dollar wind.
The trouble was, Jarrett’s neighbors were some of the wealthiest and most influential men in America, trophy ranchers who had come West to enjoy magnificent mountain views, not stare at 500-foot wind turbines.
And so began an epic showdown that would pull in an ever-widening cast of larger-than-life characters, including a Texas oil and gas tycoon, a roguish wind prospector, a Crow activist fighting for his tribe’s rights to the mountains they hold sacred, and an Olympic athlete-turned-attorney whose path to redemption would lead to Jarrett’s wind farm.
The brawl over Crazy Mountain Wind would become a fight over the values that define us as Americans—and a window into how this country actually works. All the while, the most coveted rangeland in the West was being threatened by forces more powerful than anything one man could muster: dwindling snowpack, record drought, raging wildfires.
The Crazies is a Western for a warming planet, full of cowboys and billionaires—and billionaire cowboys—but it is also a ruggedly beautiful elegy for a vanishing way of life.
The book has been drawing critical praise.
Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction, described The Crazies as, “A fascinating story about the new energy economy. If you want to understand why change does—or doesn’t—happen in America, read The Crazies.”
Dave Shiftlett, from the Wall Street Journal, wrote, “Gamerman conveys the craziness of this saga with empathy and vivid detail, as well as capturing the conflicting principles and colliding interests that underlay the drama, not to mention the bureaucratic ordeal.”
Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction, described the book as, “A fascinating story about the new energy economy. If you want to understand why change does—or doesn’t—happen in America, read The Crazies.”
Gamerman is a longtime contributor to the Wall Street Journal‘s Mansion section. Prior to, she was the WSJ’s drama critic and a staff writer on the Leisure & Arts page.
Her work has been recognized with multiple awards from the National Association of Real Estate Editors. Her writing has also appeared in Vogue, Redbook and Departures. She attended Yale University and King’s College, Cambridge.
Gamerman lives in Old Lyme with her husband, writer and editor Kevin Conley, and their four children. The Crazies is her first book.
Register in advance for the session on the cbsrz.org website or call the office at 860-536-8920.
Admission is free but donations are welcome to keep Books & Bagels running.
Editor’s Note: Visit this link to read what our own inimitable Jennifer Petty Hilger’s review of ‘The Crazies: The Cattleman, the Wind Prospector, and a War Out West.’