Ivan Doig Books

The characters in this novel are well described and true to the character of Montanans. Doig makes my heart ache for the people of a state I learned to love.

I read this because my parents were at Ft Peck in 1933 where my dad worked as an engineer. My parents were "very proper" city people. My mother talked about living in a 24' X 24' construction shack, bathing in a wash tub in water heated from the stove, and hanging clothes to dry where they froze and the ice evaporated in the dry Montana air.

This story brought their experiences to light in a unique way. The Ft Peck area in 1933 Montana was Wild West beyond my imagination. The author brings it to life, weaving a family life, the dynamics of the area, the happenings of the 1930 and a mystery into a wonderful vivid novel.

I highly recommend Bucking the Sun to anyone interested in spending a few hours in such a story.

Andy

Ivan Doig, as usual, writes great sentences and very good paragraphs. However, once he gets beyond 200 pages, the whole story drags. I liked his shorter books very much, and waited until I had several weeks of free time to tackle this longer work, knowing it would be slow going. It turned out to be even slower reading than I expected. Doig obviously learned a lot from Stegner about constructing long, complex sentences out of unfamiliar words ( or non-words on all too many occasions ) that have to be parsed carefully to suck out all the nuances of meaning, which works well for a short book of poetry but fails in a work of this length. After a while, the reader just wants the torture to end, but there is no way to hurry through Doig's convoluted poetry/prose. Doig's characters are at once totally unbelievable and exactly like my Scotch-Irish relatives, who are also unbelievable, or at least highly improbable in their actions and reasoning processes. In short, a book half as long would have been better.
Charlie A Allen

A fine novel worth your time, but definitely not a mystery book. Sure the first 10 pages describe a murder scene, but there's nothing to solve. Actually, it doesn't get solved, it's lived with, and really that can be said for much of what the Duff family experiences.

All members of the family Duff are unique, as are their relationships. All are enjoyable with only the Scottish Uncle seeming a little too polished; his dialogue a little too precise. But that's a quibble because overall, Doig does very well with his characters. Throw in the dam as another major character and Montana itself, and you have a book worth your time; a great tableau of the 1930s Depression in America.

And if you know what the cover of the first Life Magazine looks like, you know Fort Peck. Doig weaves many real events into his fiction including a visit by FDR, a major dam mishap, and a visit from a Life photographer.

Despite the claims of some of the misleading reviews (including the Editorial review at the top of this page) this is not a murder mystery in any way. Yes, two of the characters do perish, as is revealed in the first chapter of the novel (which is not in chronological order with the rest), but this plays an absolutely minimal role in the story. While the question of who ultimately perishes does linger in the back of your mind while Doig relates the multi-faceted story of the Duff family, this is not a tale of a family coping with death. This is truly an epic story which combines interesting, developed, and, most of all, distinct characters with an extraodinarily well described setting- an enormous New Deal project and accompanying lively shantytown set amidst grand natural scenery. The result is a novel which anyone (though especially someone with an interest in or affinity for the American West) should thoroughly enjoy.

As a young American Studies major, I read _English Creek_ , the second book about the McCaskill family, for a class about the American West. I was enchanted. Then I read the first, _Dancing at the Rascal Fair_ (the first in the series) which enchanted me again. Close to ten years after I read my first Doig book, _Ride with Me, Mariah Montana_ yet again entertained and beguiled me. Doig is a gift to us readers.

There is not a single dud in this series. Even if you don't like "western" novels (and I usually do not), these are great reads with excellant characters.

The two earlier books in this trilogy introduced me to the wonderful, fascinating McCaskills and to the rugged, hard and dangerous beauty of Montana. This final book brings closure to the family story and describes modern Montana. Ivan Doig brings the characters to life and makes you feel the country as a character in itself. This trilogy is highly readable and very enjoyable. It describes an important part of our American culture.

This book was a great disappointment after Dancing at the Rascal Fair. Ride with Me was nothing but an excuse for Doig to make a little money from all he knows about Montana, a state whose geography holds no interest for me. The characters were unpleasant, and the plot was thin. The old man is nasty and cantankerous without justification. The lovers end up exactly where they began, so all that happens between them during the novel cancels out. The hours the characters spent driving around in that truck brought back many painful memories of the boring vacations my sister and I were forced to take with our parents to see the country. Dull, dull, dull! I'd have given this a minus score if that were a possibility. Zero is too good for it.

"Ride With Me, Mariah Montana" fits perfectly with "Dancing at the Rascal Fair" and "English Creek". The emphasis on well-developed characters and beautiful landscape descriptions continue to be foremeost. Beyond those, there is a story here, a complete story of a family. There are issues of grief, of loss, of love, and of reconciliation that are as real as day-to-day living. Fans of Wallace Stegner and Norman Maclean will find these works every bit as rewarding.