Pun Salad

I put this on my get-at-library list thanks to the WSJ's Tom Nolan putting it on his list of 2025's best mysteries (WSJ gifted link). In addition, the book's Amazon page reveals more praise: "The Economist 40 Best Books of 2025 * Apple’s Best Books of the Year * Hudson Best of the Year * Kirkus Best Books of 2025".

I liked it anyway.

It is the story of two brothers, Thad and Hazen, living their economically-perilous existence down in the southwest corner of Montana, near Yellowstone. Their primary means of survival is the backbreaking, sometimes heartbreaking, work of harvesting, chopping, and delivering firewood to their neighbors. They supplement their income with some illegality: trapping bears and selling their pelts, claws, and gall bladders (!) to a local fence, the "Scot".

The Scot tempts them with an even-more-illegal proposition: an early-spring incursion into Yellowstone to harvest "sheds", elk antlers dropped on the park's scenic meadows. Yes, that's a no-no. Thad and Hazen hatch a convoluted scheme involving inflatable rafts to bring around a hundred sheds out of the park down a twisty and treacherous river, under the noses of park rangers. (I'm old, so Boo-Boo Bear saying "the Ranger isn't gonna like this, Yogi" kept popping into my head.)

Minor spoiler: it all goes horribly wrong.

It's set close to C.J. Box territory, both in physical location and sheer outdoorsiness, well-described. The author, Callan Wink, tends to emphasize the grittier aspects, though. And even though Joe Pickett would consider the brothers' activities beyond the pale, Nate Romanowski would probably sympathize.