Regarding Willingness : Chronicles of a Fraught Life

2020 Montana Book Award Honor Book“(These) stories should be required reading.” -Montana BookAward Committee Tom “Harp” Harpole was a horse logger working from remotemountain camps and living in wall tents until an accident suggested a change oflifestyle.

He took to his other avocation – writing, and studied abroad inIreland.

He began publishing stories in periodicals such as Smithsonian Air& Space, Sports Illustrated, Crocodil, Montana Quarterly, Whitefish Review,and more.

In 1986 his story “The Last of Butch” (Faber & Faber, London) wasselected as The Best Short Story in the British Isles.

His work has beenshort-listed for the National Magazine Award twice, and translated into sixlanguages.

He has been a guest reader on NPR more than a dozen times.

Harpolewrites in a voice that uses his natural wit and humor to shed light on alife of stories that bring readers to the edge of danger. “Tom Harpole is whatyou might call a thinking man’s Evel Knievel,” - Aaron Parrett, author of Montana: Then & NowCertain magazines that assigned Harp feature articles knew earlyon that he would try anything that involved physical/emotional risks.

Heregarded himself as a Survivor’sEuphoria aficionado.

Hiswillingness and perspective on dalliances with danger range from an N.F.L. record, to horse logging, to skydiving with Russian cosmonauts, to getting ablack bear stoned, to his compassion as a volunteer EMT in rural Montana, toprotesting Gorbachev in 1990, to driving ice roads above the Arctic circle, andmore.

This book is a collection of sixteen of his most popular stories.