It is a little masterpiece of harrowing adventure. Based on an actual event, it tells of the escape by four indentured Swedes from Russian America (1853 Alaska) to what is now Oregon in a stolen canoe two die on the way. The imaginary retrieval of the past became central in The Sea Runners (1982), his first novel. Swan, an obscure artist and observer of coastal Indian life in the Pacific Northwest. This strong sense of the land and a growing preoccupation with time are further developed in Winter Brothers (1980), interwoven observations by Doig and excerpts from the 1862-90 diaries of James G. Look at his achievement: This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind, published in 1978 when he was 39, is a powerful memoir about his widowed, sheep-herding father, Charles Doig, son of Scottish immigrants, who instills in his son a deep affinity for language, storytelling and the raw Montana landscape. All beautifully evoke the American westering experience and firmly establish Doig as one of our finest Western writers. In just nine years he has produced five truly distinctive books set in Montana and the Pacific Northwest, three of them novels. IVAN DOIG is a happy mixture of poet and historian. DANCING AT THE RASCAL FAIR By Ivan Doig Atheneum.
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