Published by Spiegel & Grau on February 11, 2025
Combine a crime novel with a wilderness adventure and you get a different kind of thriller. Beartooth also differs from most in its emphasis on characterization without sacrificing plot.
Thad and Hazen are brothers who live in Montana. Their grandfather purchased land adjacent to Yellowstone National Park. Their father recently died, leaving behind hospital bills that his sons can’t pay. They also haven’t paid property taxes in several years and are facing foreclosure.
Thad and Hazen earn income by cutting down trees on their property and chopping them into firewood. They supplement their legal income with the illegal practice of hunting bears and selling their gallbladders to a man they know as the Scot. The Scot refers to a young girl who travels with him as his daughter, but there is clearly something off about their relationship. The Scot is known as a dangerous man, having shot a sixteen-year-old boy who may or may not have been trying to break into his gun safe.
The Scot tells the brothers that he has a market for Elk antlers. Elk shed their antlers and Yellowstone is full of them, but it’s illegal to remove them. Thad worries that it isn’t possible to haul large numbers out of the park without Park Rangers noticing. There is a limit, after all, to the number they can carry on their backs, and the Scot wants a mountain of them.
When Thad learns that the brothers are about to lose their land to satisfy their tax debt, he makes a plan to retrieve a hundred sheds and float them out of the park on rafts at night. Navigating rapids in the dark is harrowing, adding tension to a fast-moving story. Beartooth turns into a crime novel of sorts when, shortly after Hazen disappears, the girl the Scot calls his daughter disappears.
Thad and Hazen were homeschooled until high school. Thad is the smarter brother. He “wished his brother was a different way. Someone he could talk with. Formulate a plan with.” He’s always been protective of the simpler Hazen. Thad keeps Hazen from drinking too much and getting into barfights. With Hazen, what you see is what you get. “Some people can behave in certain ways that are against the grain of their actual makeup. Hazen is incapable of doing that,” says Thad.
Their “sporadic mother,” Sacajawea, left after teaching them to read Where the Wild Things Are out loud. “In her absences their father picked up where she’d left off. He taught them as best he could, emphasizing areas in which he had some level of expertise, glossing over subjects that had never interested him.” Sacajawea resurfaces and makes herself comfortable in the home her father built. Her backstory and wisdom make an important contribution to the story.
Beartooth spotlights the kind of lives that most novels overlook. The brothers live backbreaking lives of labor, but they feel a fundamental connection to the land and its resources. Their parents haven’t given them much of a foundation, although they occasionally wonder how their father would feel about gutting bear for their gallbladders. The boys don’t have any use for the politics of environmentalism — they don’t understand why sheds should be left to rot on the ground where they fall when they can be turned into chandeliers and sold to people who have more money than they need — and they’re willing to transgress the law for the sake of survival, but they care about each other and have no desire to harm others. Their shared desire is to be left alone.
The story’s strength lies in the growing conflict between the brothers. Thad becomes frustrated with Hazen and with his role as Hazen’s protector. Yet when Thad is injured, he comes to understand that he has always underestimated his brother. Hazen’s disappearance motivates Thad to reconsider his own life. The reader will get a sense of where Hazen might have gone after Thad discovers a clue that Hazen left behind — a clue that will change Thad’s life.
It's rare to find a novel that proceeds with the pace of a thriller but finds ways to excite the reader’s interest without falling back on the tired themes of action novels. Two strong characters in conflict with each other despite their mutual love give Beartooth its heart, while the Montana wilderness contributes an atmosphere that anchors the story in a memorable setting.
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