The Montana Trilogy by Ivan Doig

Ellen's Comments: The Montana Trilogy chronicles 100 years of the McCaskill family and, concurrently, the first 100 years of Montana statehood. As I look back to try to write a concise review, I find the task impossible. Doig is a gifted storyteller, and brings everyday events to dramatic life on every page. He clearly loves his native Montana, and makes me love it, too.

Dancing at the Rascal Fair (check status at GPL): The Atlantic is vast and deep; the Montana grasslands are vast and high. In late 1889, two young Scots, Angus (Mac) McCaskill and Rob Barclay, brave the one to reach the other and a new life in America. By spring, they had located Rob’s Uncle Lucas in north-central Montana, and before the next winter staked homestead claims, built essential buildings for surviving the winter, and partnered in the purchase of 1000 sheep. The homesteaders on these grasslands, nestled against the Rocky Mountain East Face, had life somewhat easier than the dry-land grain farmers nearby, but still had to endure drought, fire and brutal Montana winters.

Within a few years Rob marries, and Mac is drafted to serve as schoolmaster. On a courtesy visit to a neighboring school, he falls immediately, passionately, eternally in love with the schoolmarm, Anne Ramsey—an event that will affect both families for years to come. A joyous courtship begins, but comes to an abrupt end when Ann promises to marry someone else. Mac’s bitter disappointment results in his marriage to Rob’s sister, recently arrived from Scotland. Both are committed to the marriage, but each yearns for something, or someone, else. Mac’s continuing love for Anne, though unfulfilled, brings a permanent rift between him and Rob, and finally, through Rob’s actions, estranges Mac from his son.

The rhythms of life, birth and death, the vagaries of weather, the establishment of National Forests and grazing allotments, World War I, and family tensions fill the next twenty-plus years, as life in Two Medicine country and Scotch Heaven moves into the 20th century.

English Creek (check status at GPL) is called the first book of this series, but that story takes place a generation later, so by reading Dancing first you learn who the characters are and the history behind the relationships and events to grasp the significance of references that are made. Jick McCaskill, Mac’s grandson, tells of the story of his fifteenth summer, 1939, when, again, father and son (Jick’s brother) are estranged. Amid the family tensions are accounts of small-town Fourth of July, rodeos, being caught in a blizzard and the onset of World War II.

Ride With Me (check status at GPL) brings us to Montana’s centennial year, and newly widowed Jick is again the narrator, this time for a Winnebago summer with his daughter and her ex-husband, as Mariah, a photographer, and Riley, a writer, roam Montana, with Jick driving the Bago, to put together columns for the Missoula newspaper’s centennial tribute. Memories keep flooding back to haunt Jick, and old tensions between Mariah and Riley complicate life in the confines of an RV. It’s a fun romp across Big Sky Country, as they visit sites across the state, etching Montana’s history and people on your heart. I'm reminded of Sean Connery's co-defector in Hunt For Red October: "Do you think they would let me live in Montana?"