Ivan Doig-Bucking the Sun

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.

Around this eye-of-the-cyclone family swirls the epic that was Fort Peck & its cast of thousands -- con men & G-men, politicos & prostitutes, drawn by the workers who labored above, below & beside the river, through sweltering heat & winters so savage ice formed inside their shanties. And always, there is the river, restlessly eddying toward a tragedy that will entrap some & pardon others. "I have long felt about Ivan Doig's books much as Will Rogers must have felt about his fellow human beings -- I've never met one I didn't like. Doig has concentrated his immense writing talents on telling this epic tale.