Honyocker Dreams

Honyocker Dreams: Montana Memories dramatizes "recovery" both as healing and as reconstruction of a past that haunts and enriches the present. David Mogen's narrative begins with his dying father's reminiscences as he surveys the Montana landscape, and then weaves through his own memories about the postfrontier world of Indian reservations and farming towns that endure on the Montana "Hi-Line," that flat expanse of Big Sky country that lies hard against the Canadian border east of the Rockies. Mogen's journey of recovery includes heartfelt, often humorous stories defining his family's "honyocker" history, shaped by the dreams and disappointments of working-class farmers, cowboys, and miners. The narrative chronicles boom-and-bust tales about growing up in small-town Montana in the 1950s, about the culture shock associated with leaving the Hi-Line in the 1960s, about a healing gift from Blackfeet relatives, and about traveling to Ireland to reflect on family ties to Marcus Daly, Butte, Montana's "Copper King." Mogen suggests how the eras of his own childhood and the frontier world of his ancestors have shaped him and our American heritage as we move further into the twenty-first century.