www.glacierreporter.com/articles/2009/04/15/cut_bank_pi -
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Published on: 1/1/2009
Last Visited: 6/27/2009
Deirdre McNamer Photo by Mark Bryant
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Deirdre McNamer can proclaim to be one of those.
On Sunday, April 19, at 7 p.m., at the Glacier County Public Library, you will have the chance to meet her and hear what it is like to be a published author and how it feels to have had four books published.
Returning to Cut Bank to talk about her life as an author, feels a lot like coming home for McNamer.
She was born in Cut Bank and for a few years her family found homes not only in Cut Bank, but Shelby and Conrad, too.
They eventually returned to Cut Bank in 1960 and McNamer graduated from Cut Bank High School in 1968.
But the family's roots go back even a further than that.
"My grandparents homesteaded near Shelby in 1909 and I had a great uncle who actually worked at the Cut Bank Pioneer Press for a time," McNamer said.
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McNamer said this book takes place in a "made-up town, which resembles a place like Conrad," she said.
It's a story of a friendship between a young girl who lives in the town and a young woman who returns to the town after having lived abroad for a time.
Her second book, One Sweet Coral is a historical novel set in Cut Bank and Shelby during the homesteading years.
"It starts around 1909 and runs through the late 1920s and revolves around the world heavyweight fight Shelby was host to between Dempsey and Gibbons," shared McNamer.
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My Russian is McNamer's third book and is set in a town like Missoula, where McNamer earned her bachelor's and master's degrees and now works as an English professor at the University of Montana.
"This book is a mystery and is about a woman who returns to her hometown, incognito to find out certain things about her life," she said.
The fourth book and the book that McNamer will be spending time talking about while at the Glacier County Public Library on Sunday, is Red Rover.
"This is a story about two brothers, that is loosely based on my father and his brother," she said.
McNamer said the book started out as non-fiction, but decided to turn it into fiction.
"In the end it is not a literal truth and is more of a made-up scenario of what might have happened," she shared.
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McNamer has some thoughts on an upcoming fifth novel she hopes to write in the future.
"I might try to set this one, at least partially, in the Portland area, another place that is familiar to me," she said.
"I don't have the sustained time a novel takes right now, but maybe once school gets out."
If you've given any thought to becoming a published author, then listening and learning from one who has "been there, done that," would be a great start.
McNamer's presentation will touch on that and give you insight to her award-winning novel, Red Rover.
"I am excited to be in Cut Bank and do this," McNamer said.
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The title of Dee McNamer's second book, centered on the Dempsey-Gibbons title fight, is actually "One Sweet Quarrel.