Mountain Time: A Novel

Two Medicine Country #5

by Ivan Doig

A story set in Seattle, Montana, and Alaska explores three intense relationships--between father and son, between sisters, and between lovers.

Genres: Fiction, Westerns, Novels, Historical Fiction, Literature, Audiobook, Adult

486 pages, Hardcover

First published August 4, 1999

About the author

Ivan Doig was born in White Sulphur Springs, Montana to a family of homesteaders and ranch hands. After the death of his mother Berneta, on his sixth birthday, he was raised by his father Charles "Charlie" Doig and his grandmother Elizabeth "Bessie" Ringer. After several stints on ranches, they moved to Dupuyer, Pondera County, Montana in the north to herd sheep close to the Rocky Mountain Front.

After his graduation from Valier high school, Doig attended Northwestern University, where he received a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in journalism. He later earned a Ph.D. in American history at the University of Washington, writing his dissertation about John J. McGilvra (1827-1903). He lived with his wife Carol Doig, née Muller, a university professor of English, in Seattle, Washington.

Before Ivan Doig became a novelist, he wrote for newspapers and magazines as a free-lancer and worked for the United States Forest Service.

Much of his fiction is set in the Montana country of his youth. His major theme is family life in the past, mixing personal memory and regional history. As the western landscape and people play an important role in his fiction, he has been hailed as the new dean of western literature, a worthy successor to Wallace Stegner.

Bibliography
His works includes both fictional and non-fictional writings. They can be divided into four groups:

Early Works
News: A Consumer's Guide (1972) - a media textbook coauthored by Carol Doig
Streets We Have Come Down: Literature of the City (1975) - an anthology edited by Ivan Doig
Utopian America: Dreams and Realities (1976) - an anthology edited by Ivan Doig

Autobiographical Books
This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind (1979) - memoirs based on the author's life with his father and grandmother (nominated for National Book Award)
Heart Earth (1993) - memoirs based on his mother's letters to her brother Wally

Regional Works
Winter Brothers: A Season at the Edge of America (1980) - an essayistic dialog with James G. Swan
The Sea Runners (1982) - an adventure novel about four Swedes escaping from New Archangel, today's Sitka, Alaska

Historical Novels
English Creek (1984)
Dancing at the Rascal Fair (1987)
Ride with Me, Mariah Montana (1990)
Bucking the Sun: A Novel (1996)
Mountain Time: A Novel (1999)
Prairie Nocturne: A Novel (2003)
The Whistling Season: A Novel (2006)
The Eleventh Man: A Novel (2008)

The first three Montana novels form the so-called McCaskill trilogy, covering the first centennial of Montana's statehood from 1889 to 1989.

from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Doig"

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another volume of nostalgic writing from one of my favorite authors. I loved learning more about Mitch's Dad who he refers to as a "mischief merchant."

Favorite quotes that had meaning for me:

"Fascinated and appalled, Mitch suffered the realization that he was the only person in the room old enough to remember when Bannister's historic mile happened rather than having it cooked into his mind by television's backward glances."

"They hugged the breath out of each other [...] the sisters pushed back to arms length gazing with frank investigative smiles into the family mirror they provided each other."

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, I am sorry to say that I am going to mark this as a DNF.

I adore usually adore Ivan Doig's work, but after five chapters I have to give up here.

The main character is a middle-aged man who seems to be in some sort of emotional crisis, or on the verge of one. It was hard to tell because of all the flashbacks that revealed how everyone had intersected in the past. This all kept me from knowing what was happening in the now, and I got pretty quickly to where I did not care about any of them.

Maybe it gets better further along. The book jacket blurb calls it "the story of three intense relationships: between father and son, between sisters, and between lovers. At once complex and subtle, these oldest quandaries of kinship and love are all dramatically in need of resolution."

But the lengthy setting up kept me from becoming as involved as I normally get with Doig's people. Maybe someday I will try it again, but in the meantime, I will leave Seattle and see what Doig has for me back in Montana with Prairie Nocturne.

[Kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although a satisfying read, in my opinion, this was not Doig's best work. I enjoyed the narrative, and the struggle between father and son was classic. However, the story was kind of choppy and left me guessing. Definitely worth reading, but not a good example of Doig's best work.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ivan Doig is a regional novelist in the most salutary meaning of the label. That is to say, his comfortable understanding of the region he writes about is the key to the success of his novels.

Doig now writes out of Seattle, but this story (with Seattle as a background prop) is set in the Rocky Mountain Front region of Montana. No cowboys here. The principal characters are a newspaper colunnist, his wife (a Seattle caterer), her sister (an internationally recognized photographer), and the columnist's father.

I gave this book five stars because Doig's fiction technique and skill as a storyteller have reached full maturity. At times, it is as if he is toying with the narrative (without confusing the reader), to make it more enticing. I was reminded of Monet, having his own way with the water lily paintings late in his lifetime.

I've read almost all of Doig's novels. I was so happy to discover that I'd missed this one so I could have the pleasure of a few more days in the company of his work.

Oh, his earlier novels are first-rate as well -- "Dancing at the Rascal Fair," "English Creek," and others. Regional fiction at its best.

[Bonnye Reed · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book tremendously. I was a first a bit disappointed, as I love Doig's historical novels set in this part of the world, but this contemporary look at the environmental damages made to even the remotest mountains and the battles to correct that damage was interesting, and mirrored my own thoughts and actions.

As always, an interesting tale. The family problems - the knee-jerk reactions from childhood fights and hurts - also mirror my own. I will try to watch that.... LOL

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thankfully I have read other novels by Ivan Doig so I knew to keep reading, but I have to say that Mountain Time left me disappointed. The writing seemed choppy and I felt like details about some of the characters were missing and did not get resolved by the end of the book. However, when Ivan Doig decides to paint a picture with his words, there is nothing better than one of his landscapes from the American West. His depictions of Montana and the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area makes me feel like I am there, on the trail, in the "peace of pine valleys and windsinging mountains". If you can get past the stuttering style of this novel, the writing will carry you another place.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

rating: 3.7

On page 55, I decided to give up on the book. I didn't much care for the characters. Seattle isn't my favorite setting. And the story seemed to skip around. The next day, however, I decided to read a few more chapters. And that proved to be a wise decision.

Doig divides his chapters into three sections -- The Coast, The Springs, and The Divide. Not surprising. Doig focuses on, and organizes around, natural features. In 'The Coast' he introduces his characters. It doesn't all make for smooth reading, and some sentences required a second read, but he did succeed in giving me a pretty good sense of the key characters. The next two sections are based in Montana, familiar grounds and a setting I much prefer over a 'big city.'

The book ends with a 'Note to Readers from Ivan Doig.' He explains ...
My eight or nine published poems showed me that I lacked a poet's final skill, ... but still wanting to work at stretching the craft of writing toward the areas where it mysteriously starts to be art, I began working on what Norman Maclean has called the poetry under the prose—a lyrical language, with what I call a poetry of the vernacular in how my characters speak on the page.

I think it's the 'lyrical language' that makes me stumble. I favor a blunt edge to sentences. Direct and evocative. Lyrical language, if laid on too heavily, needs deciphering, and I'm not fond of deciphering sentences in a novel.

This is the 4th in the McCaskill series. I've read 1 and 2, I should have read 3 before picking up this one.

[Darel Tracy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the last of the Mccaskills, involving the youngest girl Lexa and her sister Mariah from Ride With Me, Mariah Montana.

I very much enjoy nearly all of Ivan’s books, thus was probably one of my least faves. Storyline not as interesting as most, although I liked the characters. Even the pivotal hike up the hill seemed a but contrived, the bear, what was he about?

I gave a 3 so still recommend, but not before English Creek and the others.

[Sunhawk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three characters from Montana transplanted to Seattle are brought back by the endgame for a cranky father. Two of them are McCaskill sisters, one of whom, Mariah, we're thoroughly familiar with. All three good people, but stretched by circumstance beautifully managed by the author. There's several different kinds of Mountain Time here: another beautifully constructed Doig book.

[Sharon · Rating 2 out of 5]

So so book about main character's relationship with dying father and relationship between two sisters. I got a little tired of the flippancy. Doig weakness is his dialog. His strength is setting.

[Rhonda Brodbeck · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not at all up to his standard

[Angela Merritt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn't get through this one. I've read other books by Ivan Doug and loved them. I. bhaidid not lime his writing style in this one.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doig is a master of the convoluted sentence. An example from the first full paragraph of the book: “But fifty, when it came to party food, in her experience meant either forty grazers or sixty, depending on whether last-minute lightning strikes of invitations offset the no-shows.” Say what? It took me a while to get into the rhythm. In his notes at the end, Doig noted that he aimed to put poetry in his sentences. They are poetic. They are beautiful. They make this book slow-going, but I’m glad I read it. Our protagonist, Mitch, is a nature writer. Things are falling apart. The newspaper for which Mitch writes is going under. Then his father, Lyle, who lives in a tiny town in Montana at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, summons him home to help him sell the family property. The new owners plan to divide and develop it. When Mitch arrives, he learns that his father, after a lifetime of get-rich-quick schemes, is embroiled in a mess, has turned into a hoarder, and is dying of leukemia. It’s a gripping story that takes us deep into the Rockies and into hearts of these mountain people.

[Joe Stack · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not Ivan Doig's best work. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to top my favorite, "Dancing at the Rascal Fair." Mr. Doig's storytelling is honest and straightforward; his wordsmithing in high form. Some of the reviews indicate trite characterization of western Washington, and an uninvolving story with unsurprising revelations. Not true if you come to this story with different expectations. Life in Washington isn't the point of this story (and what may seem trite seemed all to real to what I've seen here in Seattle. Mr. Doig writes issues many Baby Boomers may be facing or have confronted: a dying parent; coming to gripes with a parent's choices; life changes, in this case, the impact of divorce on self; loss of job. Having experienced aspects of what this story covered, I found the novel a good depiction of these issues and relationships. Yes, it takes a while to get into the story, but once in I found it quite satisfying.

[Judith Shadford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not one of my favorites in the Doig oeuvre, but particularly interesting because the first third of the book, the male (Mitch) and female (Lexa) leads (lovers) are in San Francisco and Seattle. Not until they get to Montana to deal with Lyle, Mitch's father does the real Doig kick in. Once those mountains are set, along with the kinds of people Doig is such a genius in unpeeling, the story takes off. And it would be wrong, wrong to ignore Lexa's sister, Mariah, who is an extraordinary photographer. I love books that are able to reveal art without pictures. That takes not only fabulous imagination, but a trove of vocabulary that brings possibilities to light that don't exist. Sigh. No wonder Lyle more than slightly fell in love with both Lexa and Mariah, while never resetting his relationship with his son. It's not a new star in the sky over the Rocky Mountains, but it's a damn good comet.

[Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have only recently become aware of Ivan Doig’s body of work. Unknowingly, I started by reading his last novel Last Bus to Wisdom several years ago and have now just completed Mountain Time, a book from the middle of his career. From this small sampling, I must say that his writing is strikingly consistent. That is a very good thing when the author has the gift to so quickly draw us into story lines and settings that are initially unfamiliar. It becomes better when the author has such a tuned ear for language. And the crowning achievement is that he was capable of keeping us involved in such powerful and yet, what I found to be unexpected plots.
Mountains Time employed a wonderful flashback technique that sometimes explained earlier events and other times would set up the reader for future twists. He had the ability to manipulate readers for that true aha experience. But just as likely he was sharing background for a future turn.
I like an writer with that kind of command.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I didn't love this one as much as Last Bus to Wisdom it is still a singular story about fifty-year-old Mitch trying to deal with his exasperating father who is dying. Mitch's father is a veteran and a man whose many get-rich schemes never came to fruition. Their relationship has coloured the rest of Mitch's life, including his relationship with wonderful caterer Alexa. Mitch's job as an environmental journalist looks to be coming to an end and his personal life feels stalled.

When Mitch, Alexa and Alexa's stunning photographer sister Mariah leave Seattle and head for Montana, the story becomes richer and the landscape is a big part of the atmosphere.

The relationships ring true and the characters feel real. Loved how Mitch satisfied himself as to his father's last request.

[Diane Ferbrache · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story of 3 people, their relationships, their families, their past. Set in Seattle, Alaska, and Montana, Doig explores how the past and the environment impacts the present and relationships between family members.

I had forgotten just how beautifully written Doig's books truly are. If you've been reading "popular" fiction for a while, take a break and read something that is a great example of what "literature" can be. His words really put you in the center of life in Seattle and on a remote mountain in Montana. This is not a high action drama, but there are plenty of suspenseful moments (including an encounter with a grizzly bear!) and plenty of family secrets to discover to keep a reader interested. But the language of the story, the sentence structure, the sense of place and time created by Doig kept me in awe. Just a beautiful book!

[H.L. Gibson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I usually adore Ivan Doig's writing with its large, sweeping landscapes bearing witness to his passion for the American west, intricately woven plot lines that circle back with plausible, interesting revelations, and the spare but meaningful dialog of complex characters. I didn't like a single thing about Mountain Time. It read like a go-green, millennial manifesto. I suppose some of that is to be expected from the inside cover description of 'the generation that produced them,' but then shouldn't the story have equally delivered on whatever it was that drove the McCaskill sisters 'away from domesticity and as far from their roots as they can get?' Guess I missed that when trying to decide which of the characters I disliked the least. In the end, I sensed there was too much going on with this novel to hone into a cohesive story. It certainly won't keep me from reading Doig.

[Tiffany · Rating 2 out of 5]

I stuck with this book and finished it for two reasons: 1) I found it in a little free library in France and I did not want to abandon my France book. 2) The scenery descriptions are amazing and the scenery is a great character.

The human characters, and even the dog, are all terrible. I was angry with all of them the whole time I was reading. They are not likable or relatable, and they must be exhausted all the time from each trying to be the wittiest one in the room. I am smart enough to understand that using variety in sentence structure makes for good writing, but in this book the use of passive voice, mangled word order, incomplete sentences and what seems to me to be obscure regional phrasing turned me all the way off.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first few chapters didn’t immediately grab me, but I came to really love this book. Ivan Doig can capture the truly important issues in life——trust, betrayal, honesty, love, loneliness, estrangement, repentance, forgiveness and on and on. Doig is brilliant at this.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes:

“You can’t not go home again when someone is sitting there dying.”

“Need to collect my thoughts. Today isn’t anywhere on what I thought was the graph paper of my life.”

“She hoped she never reached the point of scorning the photo for the shadow in the brain.”

“Nobody said life is all one straight line.”

“Maybe in error, but never in doubt——that was my father.”

Thank you Ivan Doig for another great story.

[Patrick Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another McKaskill story, this time set in modern times. The latest McCaskill, Lexa, is a caterer to the newly rich from thre Seattle tech boom. Her husband Mitch is an eco-journalist who's getting tired of writing his weekly columns. Both seem to be tiring of eachother. Then Mitch's father is dying and that brings Mitch and Lexa back to Montana as well as the Mariah character, previously introducedin another book. Mitch's father has several plans and requests that move the plot forward, not the least of which is to sell his land to an oil company. This is not Doig at his best, but the western environmnt and culture and reasonably drawn characters make it a worthwhile read.

[Diane Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book to read and digest slow as you go to grow in the story. I have found Doig’s writing to be rich this way.

However, I wasn’t able to immerse myself fully in this story. The weaving story line was a little hard to catch when making the jumps back and forth in time. The character’s back stories left me feeling with some holes to fill in or go back to retrace.

There was so much mountain knowledge and as usual incredible vocabulary that I was learning throughout the book. There were some places that were too distant for me to fully understand and appreciate. The ending left me thinking about another version of an ending.

[Dale Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't like this book and was validated when I read other reviews. I found most of the characters difficult, the plot confusing, and I tried to get into it . I finally followed the plot the second time I read it. Mitch and Lexa live together and their relationship has its ups and downs. Lyle is the father and he is dying of Luekemia. Mariah is Mitch's sister. She is a photographer and asks Lyle if she can take pictures of him as he goes through the dying process. This book did not come up to the level of most of Doig's other books.

[Wina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audiobook--great narrator from others in the series, Scott Sowers.
Takes place years later, when the boy from English Creek has adult children. Younger daughter's perspective alternating with her partner's. They go from Seattle to stay with his dad "back home". Very good, I just like the more historic ones for some reason. Pretty clean, with reasonable references to sex or body parts to be expected from a realistic narrative. Swearing isn't a big deal, but it's there.

[Stephanie Tanton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Facing a crisis at his failing newspaper, an environmental reporter is called by his father to settle his estate in the family’s hometown. Arriving at his family’s home, the reporter is confronted by a junk yard of farming equipment and another get rich scheme by his father. Asking for his live in partner to help him sort out the mess, leads to a complex set of relationships that is the heart of the story.
Great plot set in the Montana mountains.

[Milo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I met Ivan Doig at the Wallace Stegner Symposium in Missoula, Montana shortly after Stegner's passing. Doig and Kitteredge presented on a panel on the 1st day. Both authors have written superb works. I would classify Mountain Time as a prime example of Doig's writing skills.
Although the novel is part of a 5 book series it clearly stands alone and is full of classic Doig lines.

[Stevie · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I read Doig’s book I gain a bit more knowledge of the northwest, land especially. Although I like his writing, at times I found it to be halting, I’d have to reread the sentence. At other times it’s beautifully descriptive. The story was good, although a little predictable. I think for this Doig book I’d give it 3 1/2 stars.

[Shelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a treasure! So far, I have loved every one of the books I’ve read written by this author and this one is no exception. It is multi-layered, multi generational, and takes the reader on a tour of wilderness areas all around the world as the beloved saga of the Two Medicine continues. Heartily recommend this to all.

[Becky · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few chapters in, I almost stopped listening to this story. After reading other reviews, I decided to plow on through...in spite of the monotonous, droning narration. That was a mistake. I found little about this book to be redeemable other than the descriptions of natural scenery.

I like other Ivan Doig books, but this one is a dud.