I remember finding some haunting things out in the woods, and I remember that one day, our half-built chicken house simply disappeared. There was a lot of racism and anti-government sentiment. It was not a very friendly place in a lot of regards, and it was often quite scary.

The rotting furniture and junked cars the characters find out in the woods were very familiar sights for my siblings and me when we would go exploring the land surrounding our own. Our houses look different, but the layout of the land is very similar. The mountain where the Mitchells live is a version of the mountain where my family lived. It is beautiful and quiet and secret and can also be very scary. The feeling I get from these characters is the feeling I get from the mountains of Idaho. How exactly did growing up in Northern Idaho influence you? Why did this story need to be set there?Įmily Ruskovich: I never made an actual decision to set the novel in Idaho Idaho was there from the very beginning, from the very first moment I started to feel my way around this story, and in that way, the story and the setting feel inextricable from each other. Michelle Lyn King: In an interview with Salon, you mentioned how your childhood on Hoodoo mountain was an influence in writing Idaho.

I spoke with Emily Ruskovitch over email about why this book needed to be set in Idaho, how she crafted its lyrical prose, and why she set a chapter eight years into the future. Ann helps to care for Wade, who is suffering from genetic early-onset dementia, and she works to piece together his life with his ex-wife and two children before he is too sick to remember any of it. At the heart of the book is the relationship between Wade and Ann, who meet not long before the murder of Wade’s daughters and begin a romantic relationship shortly thereafter. The book spans over forty years, opening in 2004 and moving back and forth in time, from the mid-1980s, when Jenny and Wade were still together and a happy, young couple to the mid-2020s, when Jenny is released from jail. We learn early on that it was Jenny, Wade’s ex-wife and May and June’s mother, who committed the murder.

From there, the story unfolds not as a thriller, but as a lyrical meditation on memory, loss, and recovery. The book opens on Ann, a middle-aged woman living in northern Idaho, rummaging through her husband Wade’s truck and thinking about Wade’s two young daughters - June, who has been missing for 18 years, and May, who is dead.

When I began reading Emily Ruskovich’s debut novel Idaho, I thought it was going to be a plot-heavy mystery.

Idaho emily ruskovich review