Known worldwide as the “Richest Hill on Earth,” Butte, Montana lured immigrants from every part of the world to sweat in the copper mines that powered America in its Gilded Age. Dozens of writers celebrated this “wide-open town” with impassioned novels of the rugged souls who braved the western frontier at the edge of the Continental Divide. They wrote of the opulence of success and the agony of broken dreams. They catalogued the clash between labor and capital as Butte boomed from a crude village of mules and men to prestige as Montana’s biggest city with towering buildings of brick and iron. In Literary Butte, award-winning author Aaron Parrett surveys the wealth of literature that has come from the town that calls itself “Butte, America.”

Aaron Parrett was born in Butte, Montana. He earned a degree in philosophy from the University of Montana and holds a master’s and a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of Georgia. He has published widely in many fields, including fiction. He has also gathered accolades for his original music, including the 1996 album The Sinners. In 2004, he won the People’s Choice Award from the Montana Historical Society for his article “Montana’s Worst Natural Disaster: The 1964 Flood on the Blackfeet Reservation.”