An NPR Best Book of 2014

A Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection
A "bleak and brilliant" (Minneapolis Star Tribune) debut novel ,"one of the finest evocations of life in Western America in recent memory, a book that stands alongside Richard Ford's Rock Springs, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, James Welch's Fools Crow." (William Kittredge)

Steeped in a lonesome Montana landscape as unyielding and raw as it is beautiful, Kim Zupan's The Ploughmen is a new classic in the literature of the American West.

At the center of this searing, fever dream of a novel are two men -- a killer awaiting trial, and a troubled young deputy -- sitting across from each other in the dark, talking through the bars of a county jail cell: John Gload, so brutally adept at his craft that only now, at the age of 77, has he faced the prospect of long-term incarceration and Valentine Millimaki, low man in the Copper County sheriff's department, who draws the overnight shift after Gload's arrest. With a disintegrating marriage further collapsing under the strain of his night duty, Millimaki finds himself seeking counsel from a man whose troubled past shares something essential with his own. Their uneasy friendship takes a startling turn with a brazen act of violence that yokes together two haunted souls by the secrets they share, and by the rugged country that keeps them.

• We started tracking this book on September 30, 2014.
• This book was $12.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 21 times in the past 4,017 days.
• The current price of this book is $9.99 last checked 8 hours ago.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $1.99.
• The lowest price to date was $1.99 last reached on July 2, 2025.
• This book has been $1.99 2 times since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $12.99 last reached on December 30, 2014.
• This book has been $12.99 4 times since we started tracking it.

• Literature & FictionGenre FictionWesternsContemporary
• Literature & FictionLiterary FictionPsychological
• Literature & FictionLiterary FictionMystery, Thriller & Suspense
• Literature & FictionContemporary FictionContemporary

• Publication Date: April 16, 2025
• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 273 Pages
• File Size: 24 KB