Yellowstone Has Teeth

A memoir of living year-round in the world’s first national park

Few people have experienced Yellowstone National Park like Marjane Ambler. She and her husband lived in a tiny community near the shores of Yellowstone Lake, deep in the park’s interior. The natural beauty was magnificent, but Ambler and her neighbors discovered that Yellowstone “had teeth.” It could be an unforgiving place where mistakes mattered.

In this well-constructed narrative, Ambler reveals a hidden Yellowstone, a place where delight and danger are separated by the slimmest of margins: a degree of pitch on an avalanche slope, a few inches of a buffalo’s horn, a moment during a deadly wildfire. She also tells about:

• The rangers and maintenance workers who handled everything from thundering avalanches to man-eating grizzly bears
• The mothers who carried their babies inside their snowmobile suits and prayed their machines would not fail on the long ride home
• The old-timers who forged communities despite the odds against them.

With insight, love, and humor, Yellowstone Has Teeth paints a never-before-seen portrait of an iconic American landscape and the people who live there.