Montana thriller writer Christine Carbo joins Sarah and Carolyn to discuss her book The Wild Inside.
Christine is a recipient of the Womens’ National Book Association Pinckley Prize, the Silver Falchion Award, and the High Plains Book Award. She and her family live in Whitefish, Montana.
When Christine’s not teaching Pilates or writing suspense, she’s enjoying all that living in Northwest Montana has to offer.
Learn more about Christine Carbo below!
It was a clear night in Glacier National Park. Fourteen-year-old Ted Systead and his father were camping beneath the rugged peaks and starlit skies when something unimaginable happened: a grizzly bear attacked Ted’s father and dragged him to his death.
Now, twenty years later, as Special Agent for the Department of the Interior, Ted gets called back to investigate a crime that mirrors the horror of that night. Except this time, the victim was tied to a tree before the mauling. Ted teams up with one of the park officers—a man named Monty, whose pleasant exterior masks an all-too-vivid knowledge of the hazardous terrain surrounding them. Residents of the area turn out to be suspicious of outsiders and less than forthcoming. Their intimate connection to the wild forces them to confront nature, and their fellow man, with equal measures of reverence and ruthlessness.
As the case progresses with no clear answers, more than human life is at stake—including that of the majestic creature responsible for the attack. Ted’s search for the truth ends up leading him deeper into the wilderness than he ever imagined, on the trail of a killer, until he reaches a shocking and unexpected personal conclusion.
As intriguing and alluring as bestselling crime novels by C.J. Box, Louise Penny, and William Kent Krueger, as atmospheric and evocative as the nature writing of John Krakauer and Cheryl Strayed, The Wild Inside is a gripping debut novel about the perilous, unforgiving intersection between man and nature.
Christine grew up in Gainesville, Florida – the same town her main character in The Wild Inside grows up in. She then moved to Kalispell, Montana when she was twelve.
At first, she hated leaving her friends and the beaches of Florida, but after a few months of living in the Flathead Valley, which is surrounded by beautiful lakes, mountains, wildlife and a ski resort, she quickly came to love the area. After high school, she attended college at Pacific Lutheran University (PLU) in Tacoma, Washington.
While there, she became interested in studying abroad and went to Norway, and when she returned – having been raised in a family with several aviation buffs – she got a private pilot’s license and decided to go to Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona. While she was there, she realized she was more interested in the literature and humanities classes she was taking, so she decided to major in Communication Arts and finish her undergraduate degree where she started, at PLU.
After graduating, Christine worked in Seattle, but knew she wanted to travel. She also wanted to save money for graduate school, so when she heard that Delta Airlines was hiring, she became a flight attendant for a little over a year to achieve both. Shortly after, she returned to school to the University of Montana in Missoula and received a Masters in English/Linguistics. After, she began teaching English courses at Flathead Valley Community College in her hometown of Kalispell.
Remembering her earlier years spent with family in Glacier and living close to the park again, she fell back in love with it and spent most of her free time exploring there. Along with getting married and starting a family, she also began writing creatively and wrote two non-genre novels and by the time she was ready to do something with them, she went through a divorce and became a single mom and put them away.
Teaching as an adjunct at the community college was not enough income for a single mom, so she began to supplement it by doing technical writing part-time and eventually, full time, which left little time to write creatively. She put novel writing aside for the better part of a decade. When she wasn’t working on technical documents, she was raising her son and for the benefit of her physical well-being, she became involved in Pilates. Ultimately, breaking away from technical writing and opening her own Pilates studio afforded her the flexibility to write creatively again. She remarried, continued running her studio and finally, pursued her passion to write.
The endeavor of writing has been an amazing journey for Christine, filled with all the necessary binary operations in life: self-doubt and self-belief, pain and joy, frustration and contentment, sadness and happiness, defeat and hope… the list goes on.
Throughout this process, Christine has come to realize that writing is even more fulfilling when she stays involved with other writers. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, Authors of the Flathead, Pacific Northwest Writers Association, International Thriller Writers, Outdoor Writers Association of America and Montana Women Writers.
More importantly, she is aware of the investment of time and money when readers take a chance on a new author and a book in general. For this, she is eternally grateful for the support!
Questions Specific to Christine Carbo
How did you get started writing?
How did Ted’s character come to you?
Did you plan on this being a series? (more about Monty’s backstory + Shelly, etc.)
What are you currently working on?
A Novel of Suspense
This felt like a really accurate subtitle – who came up with this subtitle?
Is this writing part of a sub-genre?
The suspense felt unrelenting, was that your intention? What feeling were you trying to build in your reader?
Police Procedural
This is extremely procedural. Are you drawn to this type of novel? This type of writing?
This is a really specific procedural, investigating a murder in a national park. How did you come up with this scenario? How did you research how so many departments work together and who has jurisdiction?
This book was unique in the way that so much process kept yielding very little in the way of clues. Christine Carbo, can you speak to this?
Adult-Child Relationships
This book explores the relationships between their parents and adult children in many ways. Children become engrossed in their drug habits, families struggle with enablement and cutting off relationships.
Children get divorced, drift farther from or closer to family.
Ted several times in the book feels drawn back to the comfort of his mom.
Children embrace different parts of their childhood and parental relationships.
Christine Carbo, do you have any insights about children who struggle with drug addiction? Thoughts about the opioid crisis in America?
Different Ways Fathers Absent Themselves
The are killed, they are unknown, and/or they create distance to avoid enabling.
What are your thoughts about the different types of father figures?
What is the ideal father figure?
Messy Families
Every family in the book is having a struggle: death, divorce, drug addiction, miscarriage, adultery. Even Ted is surprised by what he finds in these families. What draws you to write about these families? Is this a universal of families?
Is Natalie an example of overcoming? Or is her tragedy waiting?
Places
Sarah is very intrigued by the places. She lived in Gainesville for a while, lives in Denver, and used to dream of living in Montana. Her husband did his graduate research in Glacier, and they camped at Two Medicine Lake together.
Christine Carbo, what is your relationship to these places?
The move from Florida to Montana?
Christine Carbo, what is your perspective on Montana, as a resident of Flathead?
Glacier is close to striking a deal with Lou for the purchase of his land. (Willing sale, Glacier has first right of refusal — how does this work with land owned by families?)
The cruelty of nature
The bear’s role in the murder was kind of horrifying, yet everyone wanted the bear set free. In fact, they all celebrate when he is set free.
Idea of good vs. evil: “What is notable is my knack for glimpsing the dark intersection of good and evil in people and seeing how it can be traced back to that fateful period.” Eleven grizzly attacks have resulted in fatalities in the last 100 years — why his father?
His father’s death. (Ted froze instead of giving his father his knife — “as if I had a neon sign above my head flashing the word coward over and over again.)
The Wild Inside – Ted needs to let go of the grizzly, let the bear inside him go
The interweaving of past and present
“For a detective-slash-quasi-grizzly aficionado, I was heading into a perfect storm with this next case.”
As Ted moves through his present case, he struggles with his memory of the past. “Memory is tricky. … I see it all the time in my line of work. Witnesses make stuff up constantly–their brains bend and fill in the details, and they truly believe them.” All while trying to convince everyone and himself that his past is not affecting his present. What led you to write the story this way?
Also — Ted is “clinging to the idea that the past was nobody’s business but mine,” but lying about your past when holding a federal position is a big deal.
Christine Carbo, do you know anyone who these types of tragedies happened to? How did you research this?
Do you have any opinions on grieving and healing?
How about thoughts on patterns, repetition, superstition (Vermont quarter — freedom and unity)?
Good People … and Bad People
Karen – Ted wishes they could talk all day — “she seemed in equilibrium–content with herself, her job, and her life.”
“You could see it in her smile, not overbearing but not timid–entirely genuine in the way that always made me feel like I lack something crucial in my own life.”
Monty (as good a soul as any — he pulls Lou Shelton’s file and Ted’s file).
Joe (exudes warmth and inner peace — “I wanted that same contentedness that emanated from him in my own life.”
Gene Ford lied about careless camping habits at Two Medicine campground back in 1987. He lied in the report, lied to the press, and lied to Ted in the present day.
Last but not least …
Christine Carbo, how can people find you?
Tell us what you think, and we may share your thoughts in our next episode and send you a fabulous sticker! (It really is a pretty awesome sticker.)
Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for people who love mysteries, thrillers, introspection, and good conversation. Each month, your hosts, Sarah Harrison and Carolyn Daughters, will discuss a game-changing mystery or thriller from the 19th and 20th centuries. Together, we’ll see firsthand how the genre evolved.
Along the way, we’ll entertain ideas, prospects, theories, doubts, and grudges, along with the occasional guest. And we hope to entertain you, dear friend. We want you to experience the joys of reading some of the best mysteries and thrillers ever written.
Teasers & Tidbits
Dashiell Hammett’s crime novel Red Harvest is more than just a gripping detective story. It’s also a political statement, inspired
When Dorothy L. Sayers wrote Whose Body? (her debut novel, published in 1923), she introduced a detective who would go
If you’re a fan of Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries, I’m sure you’re already familiar with Hercule Poirot, the eccentric Belgian
This detective novel introduces readers to a British mining engineer – Richard Hannay – who has just returned to London
Even though the name of this book is Trent’s Last Case, the novel is actually about the FIRST detective case
Long before he started writing his own detective stories, Gilbert Keith (G.K.) Chesterton was already a fan of the genre.
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