The Bat House shines with kindness throughout this touching memoir by Mike Riley. In a time when things seem to be falling apart everywhere, this story of restoration is a gift: stunning in its prose, surprising in its turns, and reassuring in its affirmation of the human spirit. Riley returns to the place of his broken childhood in eastern Montana and goes to war renovating a house infested with bats. Many of the great themes of the American West are at play here - man against the wild, man against man, and man against himself; killing and nurture, numbness and vulnerability, isolation and connection. Through this book, Riley explores what it takes to heal both hearth and heart.