Why this book:  I had read and really liked a couple of Ivan Doig’s other books – Heart Earth and This House of Sky – both beautifully written autobiographical accounts of his childhood and young adulthood in Montana in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.   A couple of months ago, I overheard a couple of my friends from the National Outdoor Leadership School  discussing Ivan Doig – he had just died.  They had each read nearly all of his books.  I mentioned that  I wanted  to read some more of him, and they both suggested Dancing at the Rascal Fair as one of his best.

My Impressions:   This is a novel of the American experience on the frontier at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century – beautifully and simply written, in the straightforward style of Hemingway, or Steinbeck (but different – perhaps a bit more literary.)    The novel  is written in the first person from the perspective of Angus McCaskill a young man from Scotland who emigrates to America.

The story begins in the 1880s on the docks of Greenock, Scotland and Angus and his closest friend are facing the trepidation of leaving the only world they know, to find a relative in in Montana –and begin life anew.   Eventually these two resourceful young men find themselves in Gros Ventre, a fictional town in north-central Montana, on the edge of the Rockies, near the Canadian border.  They each decide to establish a homestead and  they both take up sheep ranching.  Dancing at the Rascal Fair is Angus McCaskill telling us his story – the key events in his life over some 35 years.   The two young men struggle to establish themselves and create a life for themselves and their families, with weather, disease, unforeseen calamity, and financial ruin always a threat.  The colorful and very believable characters in this very small ranching community help each other get through good times and bad. We experience the drama of this one man’s life against the backdrop of a harsh, unforgiving, yet magnificent natural setting – courting and marriage, love and disappointment,  children,  joy, sadness  tragedy, the seeking of redemption  –  in other words,  the struggles of life.

I very much got into Angus’s McCaskill’s  life – his head and his heart.   He is a quiet,  introspective and insightful man, who often looks to the poetry of Robert Burns for solace, to help him connect the events of his own life to something bigger – to Scotland, to the larger human experience.   He comes to accept what is, never completely giving up what might have been.   He is stoic in accepting life’s uncertainties and disappointments,  never completely trusting its joys and satisfactions.  But for Angus – we have but one choice – to do the best we can under the circumstances – and to take care of each other.

This story takes us to 1919, and we experience how the tragedies of WWI and the great flu epidemic impact this isolated Montana community.   Doig continues the story of the McCaskill family in the next book in his Montana Trilogy – English Creek, which I will get to in the next months….