Last Best Books Spring '26: "Counsel of the Years," "Marcus Daly's Montana Empires," and "Westward and Miserable"

The Counsel of the Years

By the Befrienders of Bozeman

In February of 1993, an 84-year-old woman named Sadie tapped on Pete Merrill's car window in a Bozeman grocery store parking lot. "Young man," she began—which got Pete's attention, as he was nearly 60 at the time. She offered him 35 cents for a ride home. Pete drove her, cleared the ice from her sidewalks, and was invited back for cookies and ginger ale. A retired investment banker, Pete recognized something in that encounter beyond a neighbor who needed a lift. He pulled 106 names from the Meals on Wheels recipient list and discovered a population of Bozeman seniors with few opportunities for social connection.

Together with partners at Montana State University and other community members, he founded Befrienders, a nonprofit that matches community volunteers with older adults for companionship, support, and advocacy. More than thirty years later, Befrienders continues its quiet, essential work, serving seniors across the Gallatin Valley and the Livingston area. Volunteers commit to just one hour a week, but the friendships that form—over walks at Bozeman Ponds, cups of coffee at the mall on cold days, or simply sitting and talking—often last far beyond the initial year.

The Counsel of the Years collects portraits of some of these seniors, and they are evocative and warm, capturing not just who these people are now but the lives they've carried with them. The title, drawn from Max Ehrmann's beloved Desiderata, suits the book and the organization perfectly. This is a volume about the dignity and richness of lives that deserve to be seen and known, and about a community that has found a way to make sure they are. We recommend it wholeheartedly, and we recommend the organization just as strongly. To learn more or to volunteer, visit befriendersbozeman.org.

Marcus Daly's Montana Empires: Copper Mining, Racehorses, & Politics

By Brenda Wahler

Distinctly Montana contributor and friend of the magazine Brenda Wahler returns with the second and concluding volume of her biography of Marcus Daly, and we couldn't be more pleased to recommend it. Marcus Daly's Montana Empires picks up where her first book, Marcus Daly's Road to Montana (which we reviewed with emphatic positivity in a past issue), left off, following Daly from 1882 through the height of his power as he built the Anaconda Copper Company into a colossus, constructed America's largest smelter in a town he named himself, established his beloved Bitterroot Valley horse ranch, and waged his legendary political war with rival copper king WA Clark.

Together, the two volumes form the first comprehensive biography of Daly since 1956—a remarkable gap for one of Montana's most consequential figures. That gap exists in large part because Daly wanted it to be that way. He was famously secretive. Before his death he ordered his papers destroyed, and his widow obliged, gathering up what remained and burning the lot. For most historians, that was the end of the trail.

Not for Wahler. A fourth-generation Montanan, attorney, and lifelong horsewoman, she came to Daly through her earlier book on the history of Montana horse racing, in which Daly essentially hijacked two chapters with the sheer scale of his racing operation. Her legal training proved indispensable: courthouse records, probate filings, and other documents the family couldn't burn became the backbone of her research. The result is a portrait of Daly that feels both authoritative and intimate—the gregarious, generous public man and the sly manipulator beneath. If you have any interest in how Montana became Montana, these are essential books. We are proud to recommend them.

Westward & Miserable

By John Henry Haseltine

We'll be honest: this one is a little different for Last Best Books. Westward & Miserable is an 80-page collection of full-color paintings and accompanying essays by Livingston artist John Henry Haseltine, published by Elk River Books and a finalist for the High Plains Book Award.

The paintings are done in a deliberately primitive folk-art style—bright acrylic craft paint, bug-eyed figures, hunched postures—and the accompanying text is written from the fictional perspective of one E. Benjamin Fogelson, a Livingston literatus and editor who cannot conceal his contempt for Haseltine's work. As Haseltine himself puts it, it is mostly a book of lies, "equally benevolent as they are pernicious."

The lies are wonderful. In one sketch, Liver Eatin' Johnson, jealous of the ink John Colter gets for his famous nude escape, survives long enough to weigh in on the casting of Robert Redford in his biopic, remarking that Redford has the right body for the part. In another, Sasquatch steals Teddy Roosevelt's favorite suckling pig. A third finds the Lewis and Clark expedition taking decades to complete their journey, arriving at last in a much-changed America. The humor is wry and knowing, rooted in a deep preoccupation with the absurdity of our most cherished Western icons.

Haseltine, a self-taught painter inspired by American primitive art and mid-century kitsch, is interested in how Western mythology gets built, revised, and rebuilt—a process he sees as being as old as the myths themselves. That sensibility makes this slim, strange, utterly original volume feel more essential than its playful surface might suggest. It would make a fine gift for anyone in your life who loves Montana but doesn't take it too seriously. Or, for that matter, anyone who takes it very seriously indeed.