Author crafts historical novel on N.Fork homesteader

Montana native Karen Wills has released her second novel, “River with No Bridge,” which expands on a story idea she’s had for over 20 years.

“It was one of those giant projects that you work on for a while, then earn a living for a while, then come back to it,” she said.

In 1994, Wills’ mother gave her the idea for the book, which centers on the life of Irish immigrant and North Fork homesteader Nora Flanagan. Wills had moved to Coram in 1993 and was sharing a home with her mother. They were driving around Lake McDonald when her mother looked out the window and remarked that someone should write a book about the Glacier National Park inholders, Wills recalled.

The research started in 1994, but the bulk of her writing has been done in the past few years.

“I honed my craft with this book,” Wills noted. She’ll be publishing the story as a trilogy instead of one large book.

Wills has previously written a number of articles, short stories, nonfiction books, and a biography of Lord Byron. She self-published her first novel, an archaeological thriller called “Remarkable Silence,” in 2013. Born in Conrad, she grew up in Montana and North Dakota. She received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English and went to law school, practicing in North Dakota and eventually teaching high school English and social studies in Alaska and South Dakota.

Writing “River with No Bridge” may have been a long process, but it was enjoyable.

“I really am an oddball in that I love research,” Wills confessed. “I like writing fiction but I like to have it grounded in fact.”

She relied heavily on the Glacier Park headquarters’ library and oral histories of settlers. She also read lots of books, including accounts of the San Francisco earthquake, which she wove into Nora Flanagan’s story.

“There was a lot of serendipity,” she noted, saying she found historical events while researching that were worked into the story. “It came together so easily.”

None of the characters are real people or Wills’ family members, but may be combinations of historical figures from the 1880s.

“Some of the old mountain men, I took some traits from any of them,” she said.

In the book, 18-year-old Nora Flanagan travels from Boston to Butte to find a better life. She is faced with tragedy and challenges until finally settling in the North Fork.

And the story is perhaps even more relevant today, Wills explained, because it details the challenges that immigrants faced and continue to face in the United States.

Wills expressed gratitude to her critique group, Writers of the Flathead. The book is available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Kindle, Bad Rock Books in Columbia Falls, Polebridge Mercantile, and the Hungry Horse Supermarket. Wills plans to work on the sequel during winter and hopes to have it done by spring.

“I’m very happy being an author. It’s my favorite thing to do,” she said. “I read Little Women when I was in the third grade and that was it.”