Love and politics: what could be more spellbinding? Born during the radical era of early 20th century politics, author Jo Anne Salisbury Troxel is the product of a tumultuous affair between her idealistic mother and the infamous Communist sheriff of Plentywood, Montana. This engrossing memoir explores her complicated family history, the hardscrabble life carved out by the inhabitants of Montana’s eastern plains, and the challenges faced by three often parentless children whose only option for survival was to band together.

Troxel spent her first eight years in eastern Montana and knew her father, Rodney Salisbury, for only five years before his unexpected death, but her life was forever haunted by her mother Marie’s reminisces—tinted with nostalgia and sorrow—of her revolutionary life and love in Plentywood. So it was that the endless scope and volatile ways of the high plains and the specter of Sheriff Salisbury became as present for Jo Anne as her mother’s inescapable grief and the ensuing years of occasional abundance and persistent scarcity on the Salish Kootenai reservation in Arlee, Montana.

In vignettes both touching and tragic, Waiting for the Revolution relates a deeply personal story of love and loss set against the backdrop of the rise and fall of the Communist Party in eastern Montana.    Joanne’s poignant narrative of her parents’ star-crossed affair, its consequences, and her own turbulent youth in and around Arlee is cathartic and unforgettable.