"Can't cook but doesn't bite." So begins the newspaper ad offering the services of an "A-1 housekeeper, sound morals, exceptional disposition" that draws the hungry attention of widower Oliver Milliron in the fall of 1909. And so begins the unforgettable season that deposits the noncooking, nonbiting, ever-whistling Rose Llewellyn and her font-of-knowledge brother, Morris Morgan, in Marias Coulee along with a stampede of homesteaders drawn by the

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An award-winning and beloved novelist of the American West spins the further adventures of a favorite character, in one of his richest historical settings yet.
"If America was a melting pot, Butte would be its boiling point," observes Morrie Morgan, the itinerant teacher, walking encyclopedia, and inveterate charmer last seen leaving a one-room schoolhouse in Marias Coulee, the stage he stole in Ivan Doig's 2006 The Whistling Season. A...

National Book Award Finalist: A “beautifully written, deeply felt” memoir about growing up in the American West (Los Angeles Times).
 
Ivan Doig grew up in the rugged wilderness of western Montana among the sheepherders and denizens of small-town saloons and valley ranches. What he deciphers from his past with piercing clarity is not only a raw sense of land and how it shapes us, but also of the ties to our...

Set in Seattle, Montana, and Alaska, "Mountain Time" tells a story about a generation that has reached its time of reckoning. Vividly described, Doig's story brings to light the necessity of settling family issues in order to move on to more satisfying relationships.

In 1889, immigrants Angus and Bob set off for a new land, in Montana. They live the next 30 years at the base of the Rockies, building homes and families.

Jick, facing age and loss, his prized ranch beset by outside interests, is jumpstarted back into adventure by Mariah, a red-headed newspaper photographer.

The portrait of a time and a place--Montana in the 1930's--is depicted through the McCaskill family's personal struggles.

In 1853, four Scandinavian indentured laborers in Russian Alaska steal a canoe and begin to paddle south toward the mouth of the Columbia River, twelve thousand miles away. A tense, shrewdly modulated sea adventure in which a quartet of indentured Scandinavians attempt escape from Russian America (1853 Alaska) in a stolen canoe, a Pacific journey far more rugged "than the plain arithmetic of its miles." Of the four, only one is seaworthy at the start,...

From its first magnificent sentence, "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing", to the last, "I am haunted by waters", A River Runs Through It is an American classic. Based on Norman Maclean's childhood experiences, A River Runs Through It has established itself as one of the most moving stories of our time; it captivates readers with vivid descriptions of life along Montana's Big Blackfoot River and its near magical...