We dated country style. On winter weekends, he’d pick me up in the battered four-wheel-drive and we’d spotlight for rabbits, driving for hours over the rough frozen prairie with a flask of whiskey between us. In summer, we took the shale ridge road overlooking the Missouri River, edging the truck around washouts and through creek crossings, stopping to explore long-abandoned homesteads. (196)
Blunt, Judy. Breaking Clean. New York: Knopf, 2002.
Judy Blunt was born into a third generation of Montana homesteaders. Breaking Clean covers the first 30 years of her life in rural communities near Malta, culminating with her critical move across the state to attend college in Missoula.
Breaking Clean won the Whiting Writers’ Award, the PEN/Jerard Fund Award, Mountains and Plains Nonfiction Book Award, Willa Cather Literary Award, and was one of the New York Times’ Notable Books.
While the settings in Breaking Clean are clearly drawn from actual locales, it is understood that the book—including its places—is ultimately the product of the author’s imagination. The intent of this literary map is to enrich the reading experience by interpreting those places, not to render them literally or definitively.
Married to a local rancher at age 18, Blunt had three children over the next 13 years. As her story unfolds in Breaking Clean, Blunt’s desire to explore life beyond the ranch increases. Eventually, her curiosity and courage prevail. “A decade after leaving Phillips County, I find that place defines my voice as a writer as surely as it once defined my life.” (Judy Blunt, from an interview with Random House Publishers)