Heart Earth: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Ivan Doig (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 8, 1993

A family memoir that began with This House of Sky continues with an evocation of America before, during, and after World War II, as the Doigs journey from an Arizona defense housing project to the mountains of Montana.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In poetic and precise prose, Doig has crafted a worthy complement to his acclaimed memoir, This House of Sky. While that book concerned family tensions after his mother Berneta's death in 1945, here, prompted by a cache of his mother's letters to her sailor brother from that year, Doig recreates a life "the five-year-old dirtmover that was me" could hardly have known. He describes life in an Arizona housing project for defense workers, where his family moved to spare his mother's asthma. He tracks down his Uncle Wally's old beau, about whom his mother wrote. He recalls the battle between his grandmother and father over his mother's medical condition, "the geography of risk" and the family move back to Montana ranching. Doig's writing is immensely quotable--listening to his elders was "prowling with your ears." What makes this book so touching is that, through letters, Doig realizes how much he, the writer, owes to "this earlier family member who wordworked."
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Fifteen years after This House of Sky, Doig (Ride with Me, Mariah Montana, 1990, etc.) returns to his earliest days in another profoundly original and lustrous re-creation. Inspired by wartime letters (just recently presented to the author) from his mother to a favorite brother stationed in the Pacific, Doig traces his family's struggles from Montana ranches so isolated that ``weather was the only neighbor'' to the shared hopes of an Arizona defense workers' housing project and back to Montana, with its steady string of natural indignities. Doig's parents eke out a living, always on the verge of better times despite the shadow of his mother's asthma and the prevalence of daily hardships: coyotes near the sheep ranch; infested one-room houses; road mud ``thick enough to float a train.'' His mother's death comes without warning, on the author's sixth birthday, just as the sheep are ready for shearing and a certain healthy profit. ``Nobody got over her,'' Doig writes, ``those around me in my growing-up stayed hit.'' Doig captures the serial disasters, as well as several cherished family scenes--including a lunch of Spam sandwiches and lime Kool-Aid--with the clarifying beauty and sure shaping hand of his first book. Even when mining some of the same material that appeared there, he claims new territory for the significant figures in his life. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Atheneum; First Edition (?) edition (September 8, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689121377
• ISBN-13: 978-0689121371
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,182,338 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

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating, November 27, 1999

By 

Bobbie Nelson (Vancouver, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heart Earth (Audio Cassette)

This was my first Ivan Doig book, and after finishing it I immediately picked up This House of Sky. That the story springs forth from his mother's letters seems a fitting start for my experience with Ivan's books, to see how her moments of letter writing have spun themselves out through the words of her son in this book. The easy flow of his writing and the heart and feeling that flows with it (the little boy *kiting* down the prickly peared hill in Arizona) makes it great art--taking form as though it were always meant to be that way--unforced and uncontrived, as natural and beautiful as the Montana and the people he introduces us to. And I appreciate Ivan's own contributions to these review forums. As in this book and the House of Sky book, the love comes through. I have read both twice now (which I seldom do) and intend to keep them as a part of my library (which I also seldom do). I'm so glad I have found this writer and his books. Thank you, Ivan Doig, for sharing with us.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Days of their lives . . ., July 29, 2006

By 

Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Heart Earth: A Memoir (Mass Market Paperback)

As a sometime writer, I am always humbled by Ivan Doig's rapturous rendering of human experience in the written word. His love of language is a perfect match for the sense of wonder he brings to whatever he's writing about, and he can spin what is often a simple idea into a lengthy interweaving of carefully observed details and nuances of feeling and gentle humor.

He does that here with a handful of letters written by his mother from Arizona and Montana to her brother on board a Navy destroyer in the Pacific during the closing months of WWII. They are also her own last months, dying as she does of heart failure in a high altitude sheep camp where she has been spending a summer with her husband and young son, the author. Doig generates pages of meaning and significance from single sentences in her letters, notably recreating one of her last days, herding sheep on horseback and alone, while husband and son travel to nearby Bozeman.

This is a short book compared to his other fiction and nonfiction, really more like an appendix to his memoir of growing up, "This House of Sky." It captures almost worshipfully the day-to-day reality of people living proudly and with determination on the margins of a rural wartime economy only beginning to recover from the Great Depression. Enjoyable also is Doig's gift for replicating the wry humor in the way they deal with and talk about life's vagaries. Highly recommended to readers of his other books, this is also an excellent introduction to Doig for those who haven't read him yet.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wondrous Treasure, March 8, 2002

By 

A reader "doigfan" (Not lucky enough to be in Montana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heart Earth: A Memoir (Mass Market Paperback)

After reading HEART EARTH for the third time, I find that I am still amazed and touched by Ivan Doig's gift. His words, and the way his phrases flow move me, and I am thankful for the many hours I have spent immersed in Mr. Doig's Montana. Although Heart Earth is basically a tale of discovery (or rediscovery), it is also a tale of hope, love and the eternal connection between a child and a parent, no matter what the circumstances or how far the distance in miles or years. If you've never read anything by this author, do yourself a favor: read every one of his books. Buy them in hardcover, keep them safe, and re-read them again and again. I have a special shelf in my personal library for his books, and I treasure every one of them. Thank you, Mr. Doig, for sharing your gift with me.