Ivan Doig-Bucking the Sun torrent

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.