Missoula-based carpenter, elk hunter and bird dog man Malcolm Brooks is the author of the epic novel Painted Horses, a wild and beautifully written story of romance and collision in 1950s Montana, where ancient pictographs in unexplored canyons whisper stories about to be forever lost beneath waters impounded in the frenzy of the dam-building era. Painted Horses has been described by Rick Bass as "Reminiscent of the fiery, lyrical and animated spirit of Cormac McCarthy's Borderlands trilogy, and the wisdom and elegance of Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose, Painted Horses is its own work, a big, old-fashioned and important novel." Hear what brought Brooks to this story and what drives him forward now.