Two men who have
very little in common are thrown together by crime and punishment in the
Montana penal system. Valentine Milimaki is a young Copper County sheriff
assigned to guard psychopathic serial killer, John Gload, an old man finally
caught after years of criminal activity.
They are able to make a connection despite their very great differences.
Both grew up essentially motherless on hardscrabble Montana farms. Both love
their wives but have trouble with their relationships. And neither one can
sleep. Gload was a ruthless killer who robbed and mutilated his victims to
cover up his crimes. He had been a careful killer, so although he began his
life of crime as a young teen, he was not caught until he reached his
seventies. After Gload’s arrest, Milimaki must sit guard outside of Gload’s
cell, listening to him chain smoke and talk about his past, all the while
worrying about his wife, who seems about to leave him. Other deputies try to interfere
with their odd relationship, believing the deputy to be too soft to handle a
killer. They don’t realize that Gload can still be just as dangerous in prison
as he was out of it. In The Ploughmen,
Kim Zupan has written, in a spare style, a thriller and an evocative
description of Montana’s landscape as well as its rural inhabitants.
