Ivan Doig

In one of the memorable broadcast talks that did so much to confirm the late Patrick Kavanagh's reputation as a major poet, Seamus Heaney cannily observed that while the onetime County Monaghan farmer's focus was — in the best sense — parochial, his sensibility never was provincial. Something similar could be said of the best American writing among the works we tend — for no better reason than convenience — to classify as "regional literature." Ivan Doig is an exemplary regional voice in American letters, which simply means he is a very fine writer who has chosen to site his work in the West, particularly in Montana, where he was born and grew up. "Work Song" is his 10th novel — a sequel to his bestselling "The Whistling Season" — and as enjoyable and subtly thought-provoking a piece of fiction as you're likely to pick up this summer.

Work Song A Novel Ivan Doig Riverhead: 278 pp., $25.95

"Imagination," Shakespeare wrote, "bodies forth/The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen/Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing/A local habitation and a name." It's an apt description for "Heart Earth," novelist and memoirist Ivan Doig's tough and poignant piecing together of his early past.

In one of the memorable broadcast talks that did so much to confirm the late Patrick Kavanagh's reputation as a major poet, Seamus Heaney cannily observed that while the onetime County Monaghan farmer's focus was — in the best sense — parochial, his sensibility never was provincial. Something similar could be said of the best American writing among the works we tend — for no better reason than convenience — to classify as "regional literature." Ivan Doig is an exemplary regional voice in American letters, which simply means he is a very fine writer who has chosen to site his work in the West, particularly in Montana, where he was born and grew up. "Work Song" is his 10th novel — a sequel to his bestselling "The Whistling Season" — and as enjoyable and subtly thought-provoking a piece of fiction as you're likely to pick up this summer.

"He has steeped himself in Western history and written the sorts of books that don't romanticize the experience as much as present it in small-scale, human terms. He has written beautifully and with tenderness and humor of simple people who love the soil."

One of the strangest things about Ivan Doig's new novel, "Bucking the Sun," is also one of the first things one encounters upon opening the book--the epigraph. Doig dedicates his book "To novelists who deliver the eloquence of the edge of the world rather than stammers from the psychiatrist's bin" and goes on to list six writers--Roddy Doyle, Nadine Gordimer, Ismail Kadare, Thomas Keneally, Maurice Shadbolt and Tim Winton--as being among those who qualify for his odd encomium.

Toward the end of "Ride With Me, Mariah Montana," the third in Ivan Doig's 100-year trilogy about the McCaskill family, there's a 30-second scene in which a character jumps out of a Winnebago fueling up at a gas station, runs over to the sign for "Air & Water" and grease-pencils the other two ancient Greek elements, "Earth & Fire." It's a wonderful bit of whimsy, an example of what novelist Doig calls the "crocodile factor" designed to "come right up off the page and get you."

Work Song A Novel Ivan Doig Riverhead: 278 pp., $25.95

IF apple pie hadn't gotten there first, might we all be saying, "as American as a one-room schoolhouse"?

Ivan Doig's new novel, "Mountain Time," his sixth work of fiction, quickly announces itself as a story concerned with the West. There are the abundant references to the big names (and hearts) of Western--or naturalist--literature: Thoreau, Edward Abbey, Aldo Leopold, Wallace Stegner and Bob Marshall, inspiration behind Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness Preserve. Doig also turns his attention to the Western cataclysms--the Valdez oil spill, the eruption of Mt. St.

One of the strangest things about Ivan Doig's new novel, "Bucking the Sun," is also one of the first things one encounters upon opening the book--the epigraph. Doig dedicates his book "To novelists who deliver the eloquence of the edge of the world rather than stammers from the psychiatrist's bin" and goes on to list six writers--Roddy Doyle, Nadine Gordimer, Ismail Kadare, Thomas Keneally, Maurice Shadbolt and Tim Winton--as being among those who qualify for his odd encomium.

"Imagination," Shakespeare wrote, "bodies forth/The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen/Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing/A local habitation and a name." It's an apt description for "Heart Earth," novelist and memoirist Ivan Doig's tough and poignant piecing together of his early past.