Not since Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" has there been a family saga as powerful as "Bucking the Sun" or a family as compellingly strife-torn as the one at its center. Driven by drought from their Montana farm to "relief work" building the Fort Peck Dam, the Duff family spans the extremes of the times, from the eldest son Owen, who has made his way through college to an engineer's job on the dam to young Bruce, his antithesis, a risk-taker who works as a diver setting pilings into the treacherous river bottom. In between are Neil, the quiet one, and the brothers' iron-willed wives. When a couple of wild cards are introduced, in the form of a Red Uncle from Scotland and the prostitute he takes up with, the plot gets as thick and turbulent as the muddy Missouri.
"Bucking the Sun" is a startling story of mixed fortunes that races from moment to moment, an epic rendering of time and place that reminds us why Ivan Doig is our foremost living storyteller of the American West.
Not since Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" has there been a family saga as powerful as "Bucking the Sun" or a family as compellingly strife-torn as the one at its center. Driven by drought from their Montana farm to "relief work" building the Fort Peck Dam, the Duff family spans the extremes of the times, from the eldest son Owen, who has made his way through college to an engineer's job on the dam to young Bruce, his antithesis, a risk-taker who works as a diver setting pilings into the treacherous river bottom. In between are Neil, the quiet one, and the brothers' iron-willed wives. When a couple of wild cards are introduced, in the form of a Red Uncle from Scotland and the prostitute he takes up with, the plot gets as thick and turbulent as the muddy Missouri.
"Bucking the Sun" is a startling story of mixed fortunes that races from moment to moment, an epic rendering of time and place that reminds us why Ivan Doig is our foremost living storyteller of the American West.
Ivan Doig (1939-2015) was a third-generation Montanan and the author of sixteen books, including the classic memoir This House of Sky and most recently Last Bus to Wisdom. He was a National Book Award finalist and received the Wallace Stegner Award, among many other honors. Doig lived in Seattle with his wife, Carol. Visit IvanDoig.com.
Chicago Sun-Times Doig now has to be considered the premier writer
of the American West.
Entertainment Weekly Bucking the Sun...derives its narrative energy
from as tangled a web of familial and psychosexual rivalries as one
is apt to encounter this side of Hamlet or The Brothers
Karamazov.
David Laskin The Washington Post Bucking the Sun is one of the
books that takes you over as you read it, invading your daydreams,
lodging its cadences in your brain, summoning you back to the
page.
E. Annie Proulx author of Accordion Crimes and The Shipping News
Ivan Doig is one of the best we've got -- a muscular and
exceedingly good writer who understands our hunger for stories.
John Harvey San Francisco Chronicle Doig has achieved his most
adroit blend of fact and fancy in what is perhaps his best book
since This House of Sky. What sets Doig apart from others who have
farmed the same terrain is the deft way he handles the fruits of
his research; fact and anecdote are woven into the text with a
light and often humorous touch.
As in Doig's Montana trilogy (Dancing at the Rascal Fair, etc.), here American history forms the vivid backdrop for a flinty family drama. Once again, a group of hardheaded, Scotch-descended Montanans struggle with each other and with nature, this time during the building of the Fort Peck Dam from 1933 to 1938. Hugh Duff hasn't spoken to his eldest son, Owen, since the young man abandoned the family farm to study engineering. Owen is hired to oversee Fort Peck's earth fill just as his father learns that the dam will flood their fields. Hugh simmers, but his wife, Meg, and their twin sons, reckless Bruce and sensible Neil, are happy to get jobs on the New Deal project, though Neil asserts his independence by "bucking the sun" (driving into its head-on rays) for his after-hours trucking business. The brothers' wives-Owen's socially ambitious Charlene; her sister Rosellen, an aspiring writer married to Neil; and Bruce's terse, tough-minded Kate-increase the volatility of the Duff family mix of love and loyalty tempering profound differences of personality and belief. Among the other well-drawn characters is Hugh's Marxist brother Darious, a striking portrait of political extremism. Doig's trademark, minutely detailed evocations of physical labor are present here, as is a bravura description of a disastrous collapse of the unfinished dam. The novel is more plot-heavy than Doig's previous work: the mysterious deaths that bookend the main story are contrived, and the narrative often whipsaws among various Duffs. Not quite as magical as English Creek, but much better than the sketchy Ride with Me, Mariah Montana, this is still vintage Doig. Author tour. (May)
Chicago Sun-Times Doig now has to be considered the premier
writer of the American West.
Entertainment Weekly Bucking the Sun...derives its narrative
energy from as tangled a web of familial and psychosexual rivalries
as one is apt to encounter this side of Hamlet or The
Brothers Karamazov.
David Laskin The Washington Post Bucking the Sun is
one of the books that takes you over as you read it, invading your
daydreams, lodging its cadences in your brain, summoning you back
to the page.
E. Annie Proulx author of Accordion Crimes and The
Shipping News Ivan Doig is one of the best we've got -- a
muscular and exceedingly good writer who understands our hunger for
stories.
John Harvey San Francisco Chronicle Doig has achieved his
most adroit blend of fact and fancy in what is perhaps his best
book since This House of Sky. What sets Doig apart from
others who have farmed the same terrain is the deft way he handles
the fruits of his research; fact and anecdote are woven into the
text with a light and often humorous touch.
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