Kelly Coughlin works in Wildland Fire management at Mesa Verde National Park, in Southwest Colorado. Her environmentally focused essays, short stories, and op-eds have been published in Willamette Week, Five Minutes, Oregon Environmental Coalition online, and VoiceCatcher. She is working on a memoir about being a woman becoming a wildland firefighter during the male-dominated 1990s and early 2000s.
But while Cather’s eponymous Antonia rises above rumor and gossip through resilience, optimism, and an irresistibly endearing authenticity, forging happiness on her own terms, the story of Kielland’s Belle is alternatively uncomfortable and haunting.