Here is the tale of the uncertainties of friendship and love here are sheep-shearing contests and raucous dances in one-room schoolhouses here are brutal winters and unrelenting battles of the will here is a love of delightful and heartbreaking intensity, and another love, born of heartbreak, of an equally moving and stoical devotion. Scribner Book Company, 16 (416pp) ISBN 978-5-3.

When we meet Angus McCaskill and Rob Barclay-emigrants, 'both of us nineteen and green as the cheese of the moon and trying our double-damnedest not to show it'-they are setting off for a new life in a new land, in America, in Montana, 'those words with their ends open.' We follow their fortunes in the Two Medicine country at the base of the Rocky Mountains: the building of homes and the raising of families, making a living and making a life. They spend months searching, with no success.Doig wrote this novel after English Creek as part of his McCaskill trilogy-which also includes Ride with Me, Mariah Montana-but read Dancing at the Rascal Fair first).įrom its opening on the quays of a Scottish port in 1889 to its close on a windswept Montana homestead three decades later, this novel is a passionate and authentic chronicle of the American experience. Montana turns out to be a big place and hard to get around. There's a bit more story but even more fabulous Doig way with words. Dancing at the Rascal Fair goes further back 2 generations. I was kept very happy with his writing style and depiction of an unknown (to me,) part of the US in the early part of the last century. Lucas’s last letter home was sent from Helena, Montana, but when they get there, they can’t find Rob’s uncle, and no one knows where he has gone. The first, English Creek, might leave some wishing for more of a story line. With precious little opportunity to be had in Scotland, they plan to make more fruitful lives overseas. Their plan is to track down Rob’s uncle, Lucas Barclay, who left for America many years ago and has never since failed to send his family money for Christmas.

The novel opens as Angus and Rob leave their sooty Scottish hometown and board a ship on the River Clyde bound for the United States. The novel is a prequel to Doig’s English Creek (1984). Set in the Two Medicine country of Montana during the late 19th century, American author Ivan Doig’s literary Western Dancing at the Rascal Fair (1987) follows two Scottish immigrants, Angus McCaskill and Rob Barclay, as they make new lives on the frontier. Ivan Doig This Study Guide consists of approximately 33 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Dancing at the Rascal Fair.

Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig