He graduated from Bismarck State College,[1] then earned both bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of North Dakota.
But Montana 1948, published in 1993, was a success, winning the Milkweed National Fiction Prize that year[4] and going on to sell more than half a million copies.
The book follows the story of a Montana family and involves the sexual assault and murder of a Native American woman.
In 2020, Henry Sibley High School in Mendota Heights, Minnesota, announced that it would stop teaching the novel temporarily until fuller cultural context of the book's setting could be taught as well.
[5] Watson's 2013 novel 'Let Him Go', has been made into a film, directed by Thomas Bezucha, and starring Kevin Costner, Diane Lane and Lesley Manville.