Description

Named a Best Book of the Year by the Seattle Times and Kirkus Review

The final novel from a great American storyteller.

Donal Cameron is being raised by his grandmother, the cook at the legendary Double W ranch in Ivan Doig’s beloved Two Medicine Country of the Montana Rockies, a landscape that gives full rein to an eleven-year-old’s imagination. But when Gram has to have surgery for “female trouble” in the summer of 1951, all she can think to do is to ship Donal off to her sister in faraway Manitowoc, Wisconsin. There Donal is in for a rude surprise: Aunt Kate–bossy, opinionated, argumentative, and tyrannical—is nothing like her sister. She henpecks her good-natured husband, Herman the German, and Donal can’t seem to get on her good side either. After one contretemps too many, Kate  packs him back to the authorities in Montana on the next Greyhound. But as it turns out, Donal isn’t traveling solo: Herman the German has decided to fly the coop with him. In the immortal American tradition, the pair light out for the territory together, meeting a classic Doigian ensemble of characters and having rollicking misadventures along the way.

Charming, wise, and slyly funny, Last Bus to Wisdom is a last sweet gift from a writer whose books have bestowed untold pleasure on countless readers. 

About the Author

Ivan Doig was born in White Sulphur Springs, Montana to a family of homesteaders and ranch hands. After the death of his mother Berneta, on his sixth birthday, he was raised by his father Charles "Charlie" Doig and his grandmother Elizabeth "Bessie" Ringer. After several stints on ranches, they moved to Dupuyer, Pondera County, Montana in the north to herd sheep close to the Rocky Mountain Front.After his graduation from Valier high school, Doig attended Northwestern University, where he received a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in journalism. He later earned a Ph.D. in American history at the University of Washington, writing his dissertation about John J. McGilvra (1827-1903). He lived with his wife Carol Doig, née Muller, a university professor of English, in Seattle, Washington.Before Ivan Doig became a novelist, he wrote for newspapers and magazines as a free-lancer and worked for the United States Forest Service.Much of his fiction is set in the Montana country of his youth. His major theme is family life in the past, mixing personal memory and regional history. As the western landscape and people play an important role in his fiction, he has been hailed as the new dean of western literature, a worthy successor to Wallace Stegner.BibliographyHis works includes both fictional and non-fictional writings. They can be divided into four groups:Early WorksNews: A Consumer's Guide (1972) - a media textbook coauthored by Carol DoigStreets We Have Come Down: Literature of the City (1975) - an anthology edited by Ivan DoigUtopian America: Dreams and Realities (1976) - an anthology edited by Ivan DoigAutobiographical BooksThis House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind (1979) - memoirs based on the author's life with his father and grandmother (nominated for National Book Award)Heart Earth (1993) - memoirs based on his mother's letters to her brother WallyRegional WorksWinter Brothers: A Season at the Edge of America (1980) - an essayistic dialog with James G. SwanThe Sea Runners (1982) - an adventure novel about four Swedes escaping from New Archangel, today's Sitka, AlaskaHistorical NovelsEnglish Creek (1984)Dancing at the Rascal Fair (1987)Ride with Me, Mariah Montana (1990)Bucking the Sun: A Novel (1996)Mountain Time: A Novel (1999)Prairie Nocturne: A Novel (2003)The Whistling Season: A Novel (2006)The Eleventh Man: A Novel (2008)The first three Montana novels form the so-called McCaskill trilogy, covering the first centennial of Montana's statehood from 1889 to 1989.from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Doig"