In this lecture, Labuskes will use her internationally best-selling novel The Boxcar Librarian to highlight the many ways trains acted as connective tissue in Montana during the 1920s. The novel was inspired by Missoula’s own Ruth Worden, who created the Lumberman’s Library to bring books to lumberjack camps via the railroads that mining companies already had in place. Those books—and magazines, newspapers, and music—provided a bit of relief and entertainment to workers who lived harsh, isolated existences in Montana’s wilderness. That impulse to help neighbors and build community can be found in many examples throughout this era where Montana was weathering a painful depression—long before droughts and bank closures hit the rest of the country. Labuskes will explore all the ways trains played a role in that history while also answering what exactly the “bootleg lady of Glacier Park” has to do with any of it.