Writing is her way of imagining the story, the characters, and the perspectives behind an intuition. “The process of imagining what that memory could be was the process of writing the book.” From the Iowa Writers’ Workshop to IdahoĪll of Ruskovich’s work starts with a feeling. “That mountain had a memory, one that we’ll never fully know,” Ruskovich said. What struck her the most was that she could sense something so dark in such a beautiful place. It was a lovely day, but she was overcome by a strange foreboding feeling. Ruskovich remembers a day she was gathering firewood with her family on a remote mountain in Idaho. That “feeling” was the spark for a short story that slowly evolved into the novel. “Idaho was in my writing from the beginning. “I never decided I would write about where I grew up,” she said. Ruskovich, a CU Denver Assistant Professor of English in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) and a contributing editor for Copper Nickel, the national literary journal housed at CU Denver, has always been drawn to write about Idaho’s complicated landscape and people.
Like the place, the novel is a study in contrasts: the story revolves around a moment of brutal violence-a mother’s murder of her child-the aftermath of which is examined through prose so beautiful it comforts as it probes. The rugged mountains in the panhandle serve as the setting for the novel’s exploration of memory, love, and violence.
In such a severe landscape, questions of safety are constant, and this theme pervades Ruskovich’s first novel, Idaho. Her childhood terrain was mountainous the winter days were short and dark, and the summers were bright and sweltering. Writer Emily Ruskovich remembers northern Idaho as a place of struggle, where beauty and danger competed for attention.
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