Hills Hide Mountains - by Travis Klempan (Paperback)

About the Book

A hardship reunites two friends in Montana under the big sky and on the banks of the Big Steep River where they run a rafting adventure company until a supernatural force threatens the demise of all they know and love.

Book Synopsis

By all accounts, Mohini's new life in Chicago appears picture-perfect-poised, static, and artificial. But when her boyfriend, Kirk, breaks the frame and kicks her out of his condo on their anniversary, Mo is too embarrassed to head east to face her parents' disappointment. Instead, she reaches out to the only lifeline she has left-her deceased best friend's lover, John, a former soldier now living on the edge of Montana's wilderness.

Together, they work for John's Big Steep River Expeditions-the premier, and only, rafting company in Bonaventure, a town not exactly in the middle of nowhere but middle-of-nowhere adjacent-and Mo finds new friends and a temporary family along the banks of the river. Soon she discovers a sinister force, one that John has fought before, only this time the battle will require supernatural powers from them both if they're to survive.

Review Quotes

A story of aftermath and a transformative summer along an idyllic Montana river, Hills Hide Mountains brims with the vibrant energy of finding and loss and hope and love. Add in some eerie splashes of the supernatural, and you have this very special novel.

-MATT GALLAGHER, author of Daybreak: A Novel and Youngblood

On a not-so-lazy Montana river, Klempan's survivors of Iraq and Katrina learn to navigate such impermanent disasters as toxic relationships, runaway capitalism, and terrain-changing wildfires. Their summer's depths reveal both uncanny threats and love's transcendent truths. There is war and friction here, but there is also a kind of peace-no kidding, this is For Whom the Bell Tolls for the GWOT generation.

-RANDY BROWN, co-editor of Why We Write: Craft Essays on Writing War

In this dynamic sequel to Have Snakes, Need Birds, Klempan creates a world where both human and supernatural avarice threaten the world's very existence. The novel is at once an adventure narrative and a romance; a tale of magic, personal grief, and communal resilience; and a social critique [that] reminds us that as fast as the world is being destroyed, we have to love even faster. Populated with characters who will charm and enrage you (sometimes all at once), Klempan reimagines the homecoming narrative while simultaneously enchanting the reader with his vivid, riveting, and heartfelt prose.

-JILLIAN DANBACK MCGHAN, author of Midwatch

Klempan's sophomore novel is a cause for celebration while also being a confirmation that his first great novel Have Snakes, Need Birds was not a fluke. It's 2012 and a group of people are engaged in operating a rafting company in Montana. But this book, centered around wartime trauma, includes guardian angels, spirit animals, ghost stories, gift magic, touch-insight, and conflicts between the natural and supernatural. Klempan brings all that together in a furious finale. One of those books that will prove to be unforgettable.

-BILL MCCLOUD, author of The Smell of the Light, Vietnam, 1968-1969

Bring 'em Back Alive! . . . is the unofficial motto of the Big Steep River Expeditions

that cuts through Bonaventure, Montana, and through the heart of Klempan's masterful Hills Hide Mountains, a beautiful follow-up to his 2020 debut Have Snakes, Need Birds. Like the Big Steep River itself, Klempan's prose is charged and poetic, guiding the reader at their own perfect pace through rock-riddled rapids, placid waters, and emotional eddies. Beneath the surface, Hills Hide Mountains is an exploration of the objects, the people, and the memories that keep us afloat on our quest to regain power and purpose after unimaginable loss, all with Klempan's characteristic slow drip of the sinister supernatural, culminating in a heart-pounding showdown that's not just

good versus evil, but love versus everything else.

-BRETT ALLEN, author of Kilroy Was Here and Sly Fox Hollow

"I'd never considered the possibility that the war could come home, that all wars come home . . . " Klempan has discovered a new way to depict the long, strange shadows of America's twenty-first century conflicts. Those readers who first met Mo and John in his powerful debut Have Snakes, Need Birds will be thrilled to witness the next episode in their saga, played out along a slow-moving river in "middle-of-nowhere-adjacent"

Montana. And for those readers who first cross paths with them in these pages, know that the close of this story need not be the end of the raft-ride.

-JACQUELYN BENGFORT, author of Navy News Service and Suitable For All Methods of Communication