Bucking the Sun

Starred review from April 29, 1996
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.

January 1, 1996
A Montana family signs on with the New Deal plan to dam the Missouri River in this latest from the author of Heart Earth (LJ 8/93).

March 15, 1996
Through nearly 20 years of writing, Doig has established Montana as his literary turf with the same authority that William Faulkner laid claim to Mississippi or Bernard Malamud annexed the Lower East Side. Moving away from the mountainous Two Medicine Country that provided the setting for his Montana trilogy (completed in 1990 with "Ride with Me, Mariah Montana"), Doig now turns to the Missouri River region of the state to chronicle the building of Fort Peck Dam from 1933 to 1938. This massive New Deal project put thousands of drought-and Depression-ravaged Montanans to work while giving birth to a rough-and-tumble shantytown society on the banks of the Missouri. Mixing fascinating technical details regarding the building of the world's largest earthen dam with the saga of an extended family of fictional dam workers, the Duffs, forced to work on the project whose existence cost them their farm, Doig gives life to a special chapter of Depression-era history. The novel begins with the death of two unnamed Duffs engaged in an adulterous affair and then backtracks to tell the story of the dam and ultimately reveal the identities of the clandestine lovers. This premise proves a bit artificial as Doig coyly strews red herrings along the way; another problem is the Duffs themselves, whose personal stories drift perilously close to melodrama. In the end, though, the dam itself and the significance of the historical moment are more than enough to hold our interest. Not Doig at his best, then, but an intriguing chapter all the same in the history of the West. ((Reviewed March 15, 1996))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1996, American Library Association.)

April 1, 1996
Doig begins this saga with adultery and death, then moves backward to examine the causes. Just as the building of the mammoth Fort Peck Dam transforms the Montana countryside, it radically alters the lives of its Depression-era inhabitants. In particular, members of the Duff clan abandon subsistence farming and move to the construction boomtowns. There a father, three brothers, and their wives confront the task of building the largest earthen dam in the world, brave the dangers of such labor, and battle among themselves. Doig has published memoirs of his Montana youth (National Book Award finalist This House of Sky, LJ 9/15/78) and a novel trilogy set in the same area. His latest novel continues this regional emphasis, carefully constructing a semidocumentary frame for an intense family drama. This richly detailed narrative offers comedy, passion, and adventure. Recommended for public libraries.-Albert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., Cookeville