Celebrated for his stirring, clear-eyed memoirs and novels of Montana--Dancing at the Rascal Fair, This House of Sky, and most recently Bucking the Sun--Ivan Doig vaults over the mountains in his new novel and lands in the midst of Seattle's fin-de-siècle coffee and computer culture. Mitch Rozier is an oversized, Montana-born, divorced, fiftysomething environmental columnist for a once-hip weekly newspaper on the verge of going under. Lexa McCaskill is his scrappy, earthy, no-nonsense "spousal equivalent"--a "compact Stetsoned woman in blue jeans," also from Montana and divorced, who makes a handsome living catering swanky parties for Seattle's software plutocrats. Doig has a fine time satirizing the excesses and absurdities of "Cyberia" before he abruptly shoos his characters back to Montana: Lyle Rozier, Mitch's Stegner-esque father, wants to involve his son in one more ransack-the-land scheme before leukemia kills him.

The wary standoff between father and son works on many levels: as a deeply realistic clash between two fierce, disappointed men; as a symbolic confrontation between the Old West and the new--Lyle's frank, freewheeling exploitation of Montana's vastness versus Mitch's helpless reverence for the environment; and as a brief, brilliant history of how people have lived off and with the land in 20th-century Montana. All of these strands come together in a stunning climax played out against the glorious backdrop of the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

One of the great novelists of the American West, Doig proves here that he is just as adept at conjuring up the vagaries of our shiny new cities as he is at taking the measure of rough, tough, old Montana. Mountain Time has everything going for it--great characters, breathtaking scenery, heartbreaking family feuds, wicked humor, a page-turning love story, prose so perfectly pitched you'll want to read it out loud. And there's something new for Doig aside from setting--a serene, twinkling levity. This is the work of a master having a hell of a good time. --David Laskin


From Publishers Weekly
If any writer can be said to wear the mantle of the late Wallace Stegner, Doig qualifies, as a steady and astute observer of life in our Western states. Infused with his knowledge and appreciation of the Western landscapes, his novels are a finger on the pulse of the people who try to reconcile their love of open spaces with the demands of modern life, particularly the form of "progress" that threatens the environment. In this ingratiating novel, Doig continues the story of the McCaskell family (seen previously in English Creek, Dancing at the Rascal Fair and Ride with Me, Mariah Montana), this time focusing on sisters Lexa and Mariah McCaskell. Lexa's marriage to a forest ranger and her days as cook in Alaska are behind her; now sturdy, capable Lexa runs a catering service in Seattle. She lives with rugged environmental journalist Mitch Rozier, another escapee from rough life in northern Montana. At 50, Mitch is facing a double crisis: the newspaper where his column appears is about to fold, and his foxy, rapacious father, Lyle, a notorious land despoiler, is dying of leukemia and has summoned him back to Twin Sulphur Springs. Lexa goes back to Montana, too, bringing her sexy sister, Mariah, just returned to the States after a year-long photographing expedition around the world. Lyle's illness and death unleash complex memories and future shocks. Tensions between Mitch and his father, between Lexa and Mariah, and between Mitch and Lexa come to a boiling point on Phantom Woman Mountain on the Continental Divide, where Lyle has ordered that his ashes be scattered. While the narrative eventually achieves cohesiveness, initially it is disconcertingly fragmentary, as Doig intercuts contemporary scenes with flashbacks. Among the novel's considerable strengths, however, are Doig's lyrical writing about scenery ("Up here the continent was tipsy with mountains") and local history. He excels in lively dialogue (sometimes a tad too cute), and in grasping the nuances of male-female relationships. But most importantly, this is an honest and resonant portrait of idealists facing middle age and learning to deal with past issues that shadow their lives. Agent, Liz Darhansoff. (Aug.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Mitch Rozier is an aging baby boomer "half a century old and working for a giveaway newspaper" in Seattle, where he spends his days wondering about the future of his job as an environmental columnist and his disappointing personal life. His children from a previous marriage are strangers, and his relationship with plainspoken caterer Lexa McCaskill, sister of Mariah (from Doig's 1991 Ride with Me, Mariah Montana), is on rocky ground. Summoned home by his ailing father, Mitch travels to small-town Montana, where he is soon joined by Lexa and Mariah. There, Doig returns to more familiar territory as he plots the resolution of a decades-old conflict between father and son against the backdrop of the Rocky Mountain wilderness. Doig clearly enjoys poking fun at Seattle's decadent cyberculture, but he is at his best when writing about Montana, contrasting the differences between those who want to exploit the land and those who want to protect it. Not Doig's best novel, but essential reading for fans of his "Two Medicine" trilogy.ACharlotte L. Glover, Ketchikan P.L., AK Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Bruce Barcott
Sadly, only in a few passages does Mountain Time feature the kind of writing we've come to expect from Doig.


From AudioFile
In this geographically specific interweaving of three relationships, Ivan Doig investigates how families and lovers can be bound, as well as unraveled, by secrets. Set in four different states, MOUNTAIN TIME traces the journey of Mitch Rozier, a journalist forced to move home and face unresolved conflicts with his father. His story also touches the lives of two sisters--one of whom is his longtime lover. Judith Cummings brings to the production a straightforward, understated humor. At times, her tone borders on a sardonic quality that can be offputting, but these moments do not overshadow the whole of the performance, which is bold, funny and thought-provoking. R.A.P. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Readers of western literature treasure Doig's Two Medicine country trilogy for its remarkable grasp of both place ("the unbeatable way the land latches into the sky atop the Rocky Mountain Front") and character (the grit of the ranchers, forest rangers, and firefighters who spent the last century carving hard-won lives from Montana's often inhospitable landscape). Now Doig returns to Montana for a coda to the trilogy in which the baby-boomer descendants of those rugged Montanan individualists attempt to come to terms with their history and their lives in a very different world. Set in both Seattle and Montana, the novel tells the story of two transplanted Montanans, Mitch Rozier and Lexa McCaskill, sister of Mariah (from Ride with Me, Mariah Montana, 1990). Mitch and Lexa, living overbusy lives in Seattle, are summoned back to Montana by Mitch's father, Lyle, who is dying of leukemia and anxious to sell his land in the Rockies to a gravel company. The table is set with issues: Mitch's crisis prompts a fissure in his relationship with Lexa, aided and abetted by Mariah, who joins the pair for the deathwatch. In a marvelous set piece of nature writing, Doig takes his three principals on a hike into the Rockies, where they plan to distribute Lyle's ashes. Conflict escalates, tying together unfinished familial dramas and more contemporary boomer-age angst. Doig lets his penchant for poetic prose get the best of him on occasion, but fortunately, the grittiness of his characters more than offsets the florid authorial voice. A worthy addition to Doig's impressive saga of the twentieth-century West. Bill Ott


From Kirkus Reviews
A writer's midlife struggles to come to grips with his difficult, duplicitous father, his estranged children, and his lover make for a surprisingly muted story. While the grand scenery and keen regard for the natural world found in Doig's work (Bucking the Sun, 1996, etc.) are still present, theyre mostly on the periphery of the action here. At center stage are the various problems vexing Mitch Rozier, a longtime environmental columnist for a Seattle paper. His grown children from a short, disastrous marriage are distant. He may soon be out of a job. His long-term relationship with Alexandra (Lexa) McCaskill, an outdoorswoman, seems to have become static and uncertain. Matters become even more complicated when Mitch is summoned home to a small town in Montana by his sly, exasperating father, Lyle. Inevitably, Mitch's return revives in him complex emotions about his adolescence, and in particular a puzzling episode in which he felt that his father, for reasons he would never reveal, betrayed him. Their awkward, prickly relationship becomes considerably more intense when Lyle reveals that he has advanced leukemia. Lexa arrives to offer moral support, bringing along her sister Mariah, a globetrotting photojournalist. She comes up with the idea, to Mitch's horror and Lyle's delight, of documenting the craggy, courtly Lyle's last days. After Lyle's death, the three set out for a wilderness area to fulfill Lyle's request that his ashes be scattered in the Rocky Mountains. Mitch breaks his leg, and Lexa has to use her wilderness skills to save them. Further complications ensue before Mitch can finally discover why his father had once betrayed him, but the truth, while seamy, isn't particularly shocking. Much is resolved but muchincluding Mitch's relationship with his childrenis left unresolved. Whenever Doig writes about the natural world, Mountain Time takes on life. But the self-absorbed, glum Mitch seems rather one-dimensional, the revelations here are unsurprising, and the climax is rushed. Believable but rather uninvolving work, and not Doig's best. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
Michael Frank Los Angeles Times There is much to admire in Mountain Time, especially in the relationship between its protagonist, Mitch Rozier, and his cantankerous dying father....In [the] conflicts between father and son, Doig has found a plausible marriage between theme and character, setting and sentiment.


Book Description
At fifty-something, environmental reporter Mitch Rozier has grown estranged from Seattle's coffee shop and cyber culture. His newspaper is going under, and his relationship with Lexa McCaskill is stalled at "just living together." Then, he is summoned by his sly, exasperating father, Lyle, back to the family land, which Lyle plans to sell in the latest of his get-rich schemes before dying. Lexa follows, accompanied by her sister Mariah, and the stage is set for long-overdue confrontations -- between lovers, sisters, and father and son. Mountain Time is distinguished by humor and a wry insight into the power of family feuds to mark individuals and endure. Set against the glorious backdrop of Montana mountain country, it is a dazzling novel of love, family, and the contemporary West.


About the Author
Ivan Doig grew up in a family of Montana ranch hands and now lives in Seattle. He is the author of nine books, including This House of Sky, a nonfiction finalist for the National Book Award; Winter Brothers; the memoir Heart Earth; and the novels Sea Runners and Bucking the Sun. Mountain Time is a contemporary sequel to the McCaskill family trilogy, which includes the novels English Creek, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, and Ride with Me, Mariah Montana.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In his latest novel, Ivan Doig writes of a generation, shaped by the sixties, that has reached its time of reckoning, and of a man who must uncover the secrets of his father's past before he can live and love in the present. Mitch Rozier, who has spent half his fifty years writing an environmental column for an alternative west coast paper finds himself back under his father's roof, caught up in the ordeal of obligation - you can't not go home again when someone is sitting there dying. The sisters Lexa and Mariah McCaskill wrestle with a past that has driven them away from domesticity and as far from their roots as they can get. Lexa has long been ready to settle down with Mitch; Mariah, a photographer who uses her camera to shield herself from the world, lands more reluctantly. And the figure from the generation that produced them, Mitch's father Lyle, both beguiles and exasperates as he attempts to rewrite events in his life before he leaves it.

FROM THE CRITICS

Bob Minzesheimer - USA Today

Mountain Time is for readers who admire novelists who treat the landscape with as much affection as their characters.

Publishers Weekly

If any writer can be said to wear the mantle of the late Wallace Stegner, Doig qualifies, as a steady and astute observer of life in our Western states. Infused with his knowledge and appreciation of the Western landscapes, his novels are a finger on the pulse of the people who try to reconcile their love of open spaces with the demands of modern life, particularly the form of "progress" that threatens the environment. In this ingratiating novel, Doig continues the story of the McCaskell family (seen previously in English Creek, Dancing at the Rascal Fair and Ride with Me, Mariah Montana), this time focusing on sisters Lexa and Mariah McCaskell. Lexa's marriage to a forest ranger and her days as cook in Alaska are behind her; now sturdy, capable Lexa runs a catering service in Seattle. She lives with rugged environmental journalist Mitch Rozier, another escapee from rough life in northern Montana. At 50, Mitch is facing a double crisis: the newspaper where his column appears is about to fold, and his foxy, rapacious father, Lyle, a notorious land despoiler, is dying of leukemia and has summoned him back to Twin Sulphur Springs. Lexa goes back to Montana, too, bringing her sexy sister, Mariah, just returned to the States after a year-long photographing expedition around the world. Lyle's illness and death unleash complex memories and future shocks. Tensions between Mitch and his father, between Lexa and Mariah, and between Mitch and Lexa come to a boiling point on Phantom Woman Mountain on the Continental Divide, where Lyle has ordered that his ashes be scattered. While the narrative eventually achieves cohesiveness, initially it is disconcertingly fragmentary, as Doig intercuts contemporary scenes with flashbacks. Among the novel's considerable strengths, however, are Doig's lyrical writing about scenery ("Up here the continent was tipsy with mountains") and local history. He excels in lively dialogue (sometimes a tad too cute), and in grasping the nuances of male-female relationships. But most importantly, this is an honest and resonant portrait of idealists facing middle age and learning to deal with past issues that shadow their lives. Agent, Liz Darhansoff. (Aug.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Set in Washington, Montana, and Alaska, this novel certainly has plenty of mountains. But the focus is ultimately human, with relations between sisters, lovers, and father and son taking center stage.

AudioFile - Rachel Astarte Piccione

In this geographically specific interweaving of three relationships, Ivan Doig investigates how families and lovers can be bound, as well as unraveled, by secrets. Set in four different states, MOUNTAIN TIME traces the journey of Mitch Rozier, a journalist forced to move home and face unresolved conflicts with his father. His story also touches the lives of two sisters--one of whom is his longtime lover. Judith Cummings brings to the production a straightforward, understated humor. At times, her tone borders on a sardonic quality that can be offputting, but these moments do not overshadow the whole of the performance, which is bold, funny and thought-provoking. R.A.P. c AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

A writer's midlife struggles to come to grips with his difficult, duplicitous father, his estranged children, and his lover make for a surprisingly muted story. While the grand scenery and keen regard for the natural world found in Doig's work (Bucking the Sun, 1996, etc.) are still present, they're mostly on the periphery of the action here. At center stage are the various problems vexing Mitch Rozier, a longtime environmental columnist for a Seattle paper. His grown children from a short, disastrous marriage are distant. He may soon be out of a job. His long-term relationship with Alexandra (Lexa) McCaskill, an outdoorswoman, seems to have become static and uncertain. Matters become even more complicated when Mitch is summoned home to a small town in Montana by his sly, exasperating father, Lyle. Inevitably, Mitch's return revives in him complex emotions about his adolescence, and in particular a puzzling episode in which he felt that his father, for reasons he would never reveal, betrayed him. Their awkward, prickly relationship becomes considerably more intense when Lyle reveals that he has advanced leukemia. Lexa arrives to offer moral support, bringing along her sister Mariah, a globetrotting photojournalist. She comes up with the idea, to Mitch's horror and Lyle's delight, of documenting the craggy, courtly Lyle's last days. After Lyle's death, the three set out for a wilderness area to fulfill Lyle's request that his ashes be scattered in the Rocky Mountains. Mitch breaks his leg, and Lexa has to use her wilderness skills to save them. Further complications ensue before Mitch can finally discover why his father had once betrayed him, but the truth, while seamy, isn'tparticularly shocking. Much is resolved but much—including Mitch's relationship with his children—is left unresolved.