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Overview
Prairie Nocturne is the epic saga of two former lovers sired in the pages of Ivan Doig's acclaimed Montana Trilogy. Susan Duff — the bossy, indomitable schoolgirl with a silver voice from Dancing at the Rascal Fair— has reached middle age alone, teaching voice lessons to the progeny of Helena's high society. Wesley Williamson, young married heir to the Double W cattle empire, has been forced out of a political career as a result of his affair with Susan having become known. Years later, Wes and Susan have reunited to share in an extraordinary goal: launching the singing career of Monty Rathbun—a man on the wrong side of the racial divide. In this triumph of sure-footed storytelling, motives and fates dangerously entangle.
Set in Montana, France, Scotland, and New York during the Harlem Renaissance, Prairie Nocturne is a deeply longitudinal novel that raises everlasting questions of allegiance, the grip of the past, and the cost of passion.
Synopsis
Prairie Nocturne is the epic saga of two former lovers sired in the pages of Ivan Doig's acclaimed Montana Trilogy. Susan Duff — the bossy, indomitable schoolgirl with a silver voice from Dancing at the Rascal Fair— has reached middle age alone, teaching voice lessons to the progeny of Helena's high society. Wesley Williamson, young married heir to the Double W cattle empire, has been forced out of a political career as a result of his affair with Susan having become known. Years later, Wes and Susan have reunited to share in an extraordinary goal: launching the singing career of Monty Rathbun—a man on the wrong side of the racial divide. In this triumph of sure-footed storytelling, motives and fates dangerously entangle.
Set in Montana, France, Scotland, and New York during the Harlem Renaissance, Prairie Nocturne is a deeply longitudinal novel that raises everlasting questions of allegiance, the grip of the past, and the cost of passion.
The Washington Post
… by multiplying, deepening and texturing the genealogy of the Two Medicine country in the course of six novels, Doig has staked his claim as one of Montana's essential literary witnesses. Moreover, I don't know of any other serious Western novelist who has dared to call attention to the terrifying role the Ku Klux Klan played on the frontier in the 20th century. And no other writer since A.B. Guthrie has been more determined to evoke the supersized grandeur of Big Sky country, especially in a time when it was emptier and more suited to mythologizing than it is today. — Grace Lichtenstein