Catching the Flathead Monster tells six stories about three families and a hospital that connects them. The novel’s narrators are at critical junctions in their lives: Levi Travis likes to write and doesn’t know why he’s at St. Joe’s; Ruth Montana has cancer and other secrets; Mark Bugbear is a nurse whose first patient has been dead all day; Jacob Travis loves his son and doesn’t believe in God; Lily Montana hides any happiness behind her eyes or in textbooks; and Ashley Bugbear has a young daughter and one sentence a day. The truth is that in Polson, Montana, on the southern shore of Flathead Lake-surrounded by the Rockies-the Flathead Monster is as much to blame for their lives as the expansive sky. Who is to blame then? In what should they put their faith? And why do they contract diseases, suffer, die-and why do they survive?