Ivan Doig here hits his stride, leading from the slow moving and uneven memoirs of House of Sky and Winter Brothers,
into the evolution of his novels.

Letters willed to him from his Uncle Wally guide the progression from the Montana mountains to the Arizona deserts,
as the Family deals with Bernata's asthma and Charlie's recovery.

(Map, oh Map, Our Kingdom for a Map...!)

I was drawn to Ivan's tenderhearted Grandma, rather than to his Trapline Mother. ( )

A lovely book. Doig used the few letters from his mother to her brother, his sketchy memories from before he was six, and probably some family stories and research to come up with this story about his mother. Touching, inspiring, poignant, and beautiful writing. A very good picture of life in extremely rural America during WWII, although that is not the focus, just a circumstance. ( )

Ivan Doig was surprised by his inheritance from his Uncle Wally in 1986. The packet of letters written by his beloved mother, Berneta, to her youngest brother in the last year of her short life was now his, 41 years after her death. They were the link to his past that he barely remembered--his fifth year of life lived in the Arizona desert and on a sheep ranch in Montana. Berneta died in the wee hours of Ivan's 6th birthday of an overworked heart due to her frequent and severe asthma attacks. No one in the family ever "got over" her death. Ivan's memories were sketchy but he wrote that the family was "pierced by my mother's death in the mountain cabin." The letters gave him details of their everyday life so he could piece together their last year and write this wonderful tribute to his mother.

I can't imagine receiving such a touching gift. In reading his mother's words, Ivan discovered where his love for writing came from. He cleverly used this window to his past by quoting both from the letters and from the logbook of the destroyer USS Ault where Uncle Wally served in the last years of WWII. The juxtaposition of war stories and ranch stories was jarring, but it added context to Doig's early years. For those of us who read and loved This House of Sky, Doig's memoir of his later childhood, this prequel gives us a better understanding of Ivan's closeness to his mother.

The winter the young Doig family spent in Arizona was so interesting. Ivan's father proved he would do anything for his young wife. Berneta writes to Wally: I always thought a desert was just nothing, but I have changed my mind. It is really beautiful here, in the desert way… When the young family's desert experiment was over and they returned to Montana, they all learned that this would be their forever home..."What can account for my mother's high spirits at being back in that drafty mousy attic of Montana, the mile-up-and-then-some Big Belt country where sour winter stayed on past the spring dance? …Earth and Heart don't have much of a membrane between them. Sometimes decided on grounds as elusive as that simple transposable h, this matter of siting ourselves. Of a place mysteriously insisting itself into us." (Pg. 80)

Do yourself a favor and spend an afternoon or evening reading this remarkable book by and about a beloved Montana author. ( )

I love the way Ivan Doig writes, lyrically and concisely evoking a whole world of feeling; he sees such humor, poetry, and intensity in each moment and place. Somehow he notices everything.. A sweet, sad, funny memoir of his childhood and his mother. ( )

This installment of Ivan Doig's autobiographical stories of life in Montana is one of his shortest books. Doig's prose, eloquent as ever, is focused on his mother, Berneta, who died when he was young. As I work my way through Doig's books I feel that I am connecting more and more to his family, his life in Montana, and his prose. Fascinating! ( )