The Names of the Stars: A Life in the Wilds

2016 Montana Book Award Honor Book

From the Author of Indian Creek Chronicles and the Winner of Five PNBA Awards, Pete Fromm's New Memoir Sees His Return to the Wilderness to Explore a Life Lived in the Wilds.

Twenty-five years after his beloved memoir Indian Creek Chronicles, Pete Fromm was asked to return to the wilderness to babysit more fish eggs. No longer a footloose twenty-year-old, at forty-five, he was the father of two young sons. He left again, alone, straight into the heart of Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness, walking a daily ten-mile loop to his fish eggs through deer and elk and the highest density of grizzly bears in the lower forty-eight states.

The Names of the Stars is a trek through a life lived at its edges. From loon calls echoing across Northwood lakes to the grim realities of lifeguarding in the Nevada desert, through the isolation of Indian Creek and years spent running the Snake and Rio Grande as a river ranger, Pete seeks out the source of his passion for wildness, while exploring fatherhood and mortality and all the costs, risks, and rewards of life lived on its own terms.


About the Author
PETE FROMM is a five time winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award for his novels If Not For This, As Cool as I Am, and How All This Started, his story collection Dry Rain, and the memoir Indian Creek Chronicles. The film of As Cool as I Am was released in 2013. He is also the author of four other story collections and has published over two hundred stories in magazines. He is on the faculty of Oregon's Pacific University's Low-Residency MFA Program and lives in Montana. His second memoir The Names of the Stars: A Life in the Wilds was named an Honor Book in the 2016 Montana Book Awards.