When we rolled through Froid, Montana, it was a balmy (read: freezing) 67°. I know that doesn’t technically qualify as cold, but in my defense, I’d recently come from Buffalo heat and sunshine. My blood had thinned. The land was still as flat and endless as it had been for miles, stretching out in every direction like it had no intention of stopping.
The town's name? Froid. French for “cold.” How... apropos.
Another tiny town dotting the northern Montana line, Froid had just 185 people according to the 2010 census. Yet despite its size, it has one very big literary claim to fame: The international bestseller The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles is set here. Charles, a Montana native, spent time in Froid and chose it as the hometown of her protagonist: A young woman who dreams beyond the borders of this windswept place. It’s an interesting contrast: a remote stretch of prairie tied to a story about the glamour and resistance of Paris during WWII. One foot in the wide-open plains, the other in a historic library across the sea.
You never know where a quiet little town might lead…sometimes
all the way to the shelves of a global bestseller list.
