Why this book: I’ve read several other Ivan Doig books and really liked them all. Doig is one of the pre-eminent Western writers of the 20th Century.  This is the 3rd book in his Montana Trilogy, behind English Creek and Dancing at the Rascal Fair, both of which I’ve read and reviewed.  I wanted to complete the trilogy, to see what happened to the McCaskill family 100 years after the beginning of the series.

Summary in 4 Sentences:  Jick McCaskill is 65 years old, a widower, and the third generation of McCaskills running a ranch in the fictitious town of Gros Ventre in Northern Montana.  His daughter Mariah, a photographer for the fictitious Montanian newspaper, invites Jick to join her and her ex-husband Riley, to drive his Winnebago on a tour of the state to support her taking pictures and Riley writing feature articles about what they see, as part of the Montanian‘s centennial celebration of Montana’s statehood.  The book is written in Jick McCaskill’s voice as he shares his antipathy toward his former son-in-law, his wonder and amazement at his daughter, his impressions of the work they are doing and in his uniquely Western voice, he describes the state of Montana they are traveling through.   Living together in a Winnebago for over a month, the relationships between these three and a later participant in the journey, evolve, and we get to know the players through their interactions with each other and with the towns and people of Montana, and there are some surprises in the making.

My Impressions:  This book is best read soon after reading English Creek, in Doig’s Montana Trilogy.  English Creek is in Jick McCaskill’s voice, looking back as an older man at a key window in his youth, just prior to WWII.  Ride with me, Mariah Montana is also in Jick’s voice as an older man, but here he is sharing his present day perspectives on himself, his family and friends, and a number of those who appear in English Creek.  There is a sweet continuity to the two books that is not appreciated if they are read separately or with a number of years between them, as I did.

There is not a lot of action in this book, and there were times when I wasn’t sure I wanted to finish it.  I wasn’t sure I liked Jick McCaskill’s rather sardonic view of his son-in-law Riley and his daughter Mariah and their friendship with each other and commitment to their work.   The incongruity between the language of Jick’s narrative – earthy and humorous and tied to the land, and Riley’s language in his columns – educated, poetic, and descriptive – represented the differences in their outlook and their generations.  His relationship with his very independent, athletic and attractive daughter Mariah was clearly close, but there were tensions there too – mostly centered around Riley.  Though Mariah and Riley were divorced, they were still close, and there was still chemistry between them.

The language Doig gives to Jick to describe the Montana towns and country-side they are driving through, is beautiful, powerful and authentically Montanan.  The wide prairies, the Rocky Mountains, the small towns, the buffalo, the people – all evoke a Montana that reminds me of Wyoming where I have spent so many happy weeks over the last decade and a half.   But I did get a little bored with the story-line and the Winnebago going from here to there, and Jick complaining about Riley and Mariah – sometimes being a grouchy old curmudgeon about the whole chore of driving them around the state.  We get to know him and his wife Marcella, who had died of cancer not long before, through his many reminiscences, some of which also went to his parents, grand-parents, and other family members who we had gotten to know in the previous two books in the trilogy.

There are a number of subtle and not-so-subtle sub-themes in the book:  The dying out of family ranch life that had settled and made Montana, as farming transitioned from families to agri-business;  the withering of the small towns on the prairie; the challenges of growing old without one’s life partner; the challenges of watching one’s children reject the life you have lived in exchange for one that you don’t understand; the melancholy of seeing generations-old family ties to towns and the land dying out as new generations seek other opportunities elsewhere; the beauty of the land and nature under assault from big business, mining, and agri-business.   To my pleasant surprise, Doig brought these themes together in a satisfying way at the end of the book – as I finished the book, I was glad I had stuck with it.

I  wish I had read it sooner after completing English Creek – as I noted, chronologically the predecessor to this book. The story in Mariah Montana  takes place nearly 50 years after the story Jick relates in English Creek.   Had I read Mariah Montana, sooner after English Creek and Rascal Fair, the stories and people Jick recalls in Mariah Montana would have been fresher to me – it’s been 5 years since I read Rascal Fair and English Creek.  But those stories and people did come back to me – they were powerful to me when I first read them.

Ivan Doig passed away in 2015.  According to Wikipedia, Doig “won the Western Literature Association’s lifetime Distinguished Achievement award and held the distinction of the only living author with works of both fiction and non-fiction listed in the top 12 of the San Francisco Chroncle’s poll of best books of the 20th century.” It was interesting that he dedicated Mariah Montana to Wallace Stegner, another so-called “western” author who wrote one of my all-time favorite books – Angle of Repose.

Some quotes from Ride with me, Mariah Montana  to give you an idea of Doig’s writing style (page numbers refer to the hardback version, published in 1990.)

Before I could point out to her that free stuff is generally overpriced, she was tying the whole proposition up for me in a polka dot bow.  “So all you’ve got to do is bring the motorhome on over and meet the scribbler and me Monday noon.  Is that so tough?” (p 4)

None of us spoke, while the songs of the birds poured undiluted. I suppose we were  afraid the spate of loveliest sound would vanish if we broke it with so much as a whisper. But after a bit came the realization that the music of birds formed a natural part of this place, constant as the glorious grass that made feathered life thrive.  (P 29)

Here he was, as Riley as ever, like whatever king it was who never forgot anything but never learned anything either.  And here I was, half the time aggravated by the two of them fore letting themselves wallow around the countryside together this way, and the other half provoked at myself for being ninny enough to be doing it along with them.  (p 43)

Leona just smiled.  I’d begun to notice, though, that she had different calibres of smiles. The broad beaming expression that seemed to welcome all of life – the Alectric smile, I thought of it as, for I had first seen it on her when she and Alec were sparking each other, that summer of fifty years ago – shined out most naturally. You could read a newspaper by the light of that facial glow.  But there was also a Leona smile that her eyes didn’t quite manage to join in; the smile muscles performed by habit, but there was brainwork going on behind that one. And then there was one that can only be called her fool-killer smile; when you got it, you wondered if you’d been eating steak with a spoon.   (p 240)

(About Eastern Montana)  Grassland with sage low and on it ran to all the horizons – cattle in specks of herds here and there – and a surprising number of attempts had been made to scratch some farming into this bare-bone plain, but what grew here mostly was distance.  Except for an occasional gumbo butte or a gully full of tumbleweeds, out here there were no interruptions of the earth extending itself until bent by the weight of the sky. (p 281)