Mountain Time

Bob Minzesheimer

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

Bruce Barcott

It's never a promising sign when a novel's plot and underlying themes sound like sessions in a marriage workshop....What's more frustrating is the way Doig's ear for the vernacular fails him when it comes to the West of the 1990's.
—The New York Times Book Review

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.

Bruce Barcott

It's never a promising sign when a novel's plot and underlying themes sound like sessions in a marriage workshop....What's more frustrating is the way Doig's ear for the vernacular fails him when it comes to the West of the 1990's.
— The New York Times Book Review

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.