Blog Tour: Beautiful Ghost, by Milana Marsenich

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During the fall of 1918, the influenza pandemic crosses the nation and reaches the mining town of Butte, Montana. 

Excerpt: The Wolf Dog

The wolf dog wanders through the town where mining fumes singe the air, and tin shacks, thrown together in desperation, sit next to French mansions and yards flagged with cobblestone. He rambles past the Cabbage Patch, where bootleggers and criminals live in downtrodden shanties and the king of the Patch rules the poor with an iron club. 

   The dog walks through Dublin Gulch, a rough bit of Butte, inhabited by stubborn Irish people and sour-faced old women, who rarely shop for fine china or cast-iron pots at the town’s one department store. He continues his journey through Chinatown, past the opium dens, and down to the train depot on East Front Street.

He sits on the platform, under a center overhang, out of the rain, and watches the passengers disembark. Soot covers every surface of the depot, and, as the sky darkens, the wolf dog feels something coming. Something rising up out of the ground, on the wind, or perhaps in a blanket. 

   Or maybe, a young woman carries it in her lap as the train roars across the country from the east to Montana. This tiny thing is barely a whisper. But it’s there, wanting to live and live strong. It floats among the people hugging and kissing in the depot’s large waiting room. It lights on jackets of men smoking, and hovers in the perfumed air where women tend to private matters.

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About the Author

Milana Marsenich lives in Northwest Montana near Flathead Lake at the base of the beautiful Mission Mountains. She enjoys quick access to the mountains and has spent many hours hiking the wilderness trails with friends and dogs. For the past 20 years she has worked as a mental health therapist in a variety of settings. As a natural listener and a therapist, she has witnessed amazing generosity and courage in others. She first witnessed this in her hometown of Butte, Montana, a mining town with a rich history and the setting for Copper Sky, her first novel.  She has an M.Ed. in Mental Health Counseling from Montana State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. She has previously published in Montana Quarterly, Big Sky Journal, The Polishing Stone, The Moronic Ox, BookGlow, and Feminist Studies. Find out more at https://milanamarsenich.com/ and follow her on Facebook and Twitter @milanamarsenich