BUCKING THE SUN : A Novel [Paperback]

Ivan Doig (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 13, 1997

Bucking the Sun is the story of the Duff family, homesteaders driven from the Montana bottomland to work on one of the New Deal's most audacious projects -- the damming of the Missouri River. Through the story of each family member -- a wrathful father, a mettlesome mother, and three very different sons and the memorable women they marry, Doig conveys a sense of time and place that is at once epic in scope and rich in detail.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As in This House of Sky and Ride With Me, Mariah Montana, Doig returns to Big Sky country to tell a complex murder mystery peppered with the free-spirit history of the west and the intrigue of Doig's Scottish ancestry. Through Franklin Roosevelt's W.P.A. and P.W.A., the Duff family becomes involved in the construction of the Fort Peck Dam, the largest earth-fill dam in the world. While most are happy for the work, there are others in the Duff clan that hope for the dam's failure. Mixing fact and fiction, Doig explores the hardships of labor, of Fort Peck's shantytown housing, and the Duffs' resilience to everything from Montana blizzards to rattlesnakes. When two in the clan are murdered, Scottish family loyalty is questioned and the remaining family members face their toughest challenge. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

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.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 412 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1st edition (May 13, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 068483149X
• ISBN-13: 978-0684831497
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #891,892 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ivan Doig is the author of ten previous books. Seven are novels, including English Creek and Dancing at the Rascal Fair, and three are nonfiction, including the highly acclaimed memoir This House of Sky, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. A former ranch hand, newspaperman, and magazine editor, Doig holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Washington. He lives in Seattle.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Epic Tale- Not A Mystery, October 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: BUCKING THE SUN : A Novel (Paperback)

Despite the claims of some of the misleading reviews (including the Editorial review at the top of this page) this is not a murder mystery in any way. Yes, two of the characters do perish, as is revealed in the first chapter of the novel (which is not in chronological order with the rest), but this plays an absolutely minimal role in the story. While the question of who ultimately perishes does linger in the back of your mind while Doig relates the multi-faceted story of the Duff family, this is not a tale of a family coping with death. This is truly an epic story which combines interesting, developed, and, most of all, distinct characters with an extraodinarily well described setting- an enormous New Deal project and accompanying lively shantytown set amidst grand natural scenery. The result is a novel which anyone (though especially someone with an interest in or affinity for the American West) should thoroughly enjoy.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Will It Ever End ?, December 31, 2002

By 

Charlie A Allen (Scotts Valley, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: BUCKING THE SUN : A Novel (Paperback)

Ivan Doig, as usual, writes great sentences and very good paragraphs. However, once he gets beyond 200 pages, the whole story drags. I liked his shorter books very much, and waited until I had several weeks of free time to tackle this longer work, knowing it would be slow going. It turned out to be even slower reading than I expected. Doig obviously learned a lot from Stegner about constructing long, complex sentences out of unfamiliar words ( or non-words on all too many occasions ) that have to be parsed carefully to suck out all the nuances of meaning, which works well for a short book of poetry but fails in a work of this length. After a while, the reader just wants the torture to end, but there is no way to hurry through Doig's convoluted poetry/prose. Doig's characters are at once totally unbelievable and exactly like my Scotch-Irish relatives, who are also unbelievable, or at least highly improbable in their actions and reasoning processes. In short, a book half as long would have been better.
Charlie A Allen

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful writing, okay plot, September 9, 1999

By 

Steven Greene (Cary, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: BUCKING THE SUN : A Novel (Paperback)

I just did not like this book as much as I had hoped to. Doig writes wonderfully and he has a terrific sense of character and setting, but all too often the story lacked a sense of direction. The murder subplot seemed hardly more than an afterthought and I thought the book would have been much improved had it been more fully incorporated. I find the construction of dams very interesting, so I was really looking forward to learning about them while enjoying the story, but it did not work. I think the problem others have with the focus on the dam is that Doig never actually explains its construction in clear, understandable detail, a la Crichton. Its always just bits and pieces that never fit with a coherent whole. In sum, good, definitely not great.