The Other Shoe: A Novel - Softcover

Praise for The Other Shoe

"Haunting, beautifully observed." Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Matt Pavelich is a native Montanan, he knows that world inside and out, and The Other Shoe is rich with details that convince, insights that amaze. His prose is among the most impressive now being written, elegant, nuanced, rough when needed, the high and low of language. The Other Shoe, is a brilliant novel of crime, love, and the American West, and it deserves a wide readership.” Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter’s Bone

[A] literary study of the lives of outliers, a story of love, of sacrifice, of a man with a sense of responsibility as clear as the mountain air... an accomplished and affecting story of love and loyalty, accountability and honor.” Kirkus

With the publication of this wonderfully engaging novel at once heartbreaking and comic set in the darkest, dankest woods of northwestern Montana, Matt Pavelich affirms that his magisterial first novel, Our Savage, was no fluke. Once again, in perfectly chiseled (and irresistible) prose, he offers us a new vision of the American West, in which innocence is no bar to evil and good people search for expiation wherever it might be found. Matt Pavelich is that rare thing in American letters: a truly original voice.” Rick Newby, editor, The New Montana Story: An Anthology
Sometimes you know immediately where you are a phrase by Charlie Parker, a Jackson Pollock seen across a room. That’s the way it is after a sentence or two of Matt Pavelich’s. The writing is nimble, mordant, witty, each of its many characters rendered with a generosity and insight that make them hard to forget. The Other Shoe is a remarkable achievement, the book those who’ve been following Matt Pavelich’s career have been waiting for. For the rest, here’s your chance to find out why.” Ehud Havazelet, author of Bearing the Body