Description

Within this portrait of the location and time -- Montana in the 1930s -- that simultaneously creates and satisfies a desiring an explicable previous, Ivan Doig has generated among the most fascinating households in American fiction, the McCaskills. The amusing and haunting narration, a masterpiece of vernacular in the history of Twain, uses the activities of both Medicine country's summertime: the wave of lamb getting into the high country, the capering Fourth of July rodeo and neighborhood party, and a finish-of-September forest-fire high in the Rockies that provides the guide, in addition to the McCaskill family's battle within itself, to a sensational orgasm. It's a period of adventure in addition to crisis, where fourteen-year-old Jick comes of age. Through his eyes we view those closest and dearest to him in a turning-point -- "where all of our lifestyles created their flex" -- and uncover along side him their own link to the property, to record, and for the heavy-fathomed secrets of one's relative and one's personal.