The title refers to the farmer’s market in the narrator Angus McCaskill’s home town in Scotland. This is book 2 of Doig’s Two Medicine Trilogy. We have jumped back several generations to the first McCaskill to immigrate from Scotland to Montana with a friend. The story begins in the hold of an steamship amid single males in the forward steerage compartment of the ship where they are packed in little better than cattle. We follow the pair across America by train, stage coach, and freighter wagon. What follows is the story of how two 19-year-olds who emigrated from Scotland homesteaded in Northern Montana and helped found a nation. Had I known this book should have come first. It will take longer to read than the book’s 373 pages would first suggest as a lot happens in these pages as they tell the decades of a community’s life. Ivan Doig’s turns of phrase will give you pause to stop and think, “What did he just say?”.
SPOILERS FOLLOW
This book 2 in the series is narrated and tells the story of Jick’s, of books 1 & 3, grandfather. It explains how the man Angus, fell in love with a woman who became the mother of Jick’s father’s wife by another man. Why that grandmother returned to Scotland when her husband died. Marrying your best friend’s sister leads to complications when that relationship and business partnership sours. All three books examine the often inharmonious relationships between fathers and sons.
A dissertation on farming.
My reading brings to mind the precarious nature of farm life. There is Davie, the young lad who gets thrown from his horse and dragged by a boot caught in the stirrups under the animal’s heels and survives to be maimed for life. Or Barclay who drowns with Angus’ old horse for similar reasons. The National Forest that gets imposed on the region restricting the sheep-herder’s grazing rights. [Think Brokeback Mountain and Annie Proulx.] The plus side being employment for Varick and a stop to the herds of cattle the local conglomerate was sneaking onto those grasslands. The hundreds of thousands of (home)steaders who settled on marginal land and were starved out when the drought years came. Read Steinbeck. The hot dry summers when grazing land was sparse and the following long cold deep winter when feed was scarce for sheep and cattle alike that died of starvation and exposure. The crash of prices when the War ended and the later depression years.
SPOILERS FOLLOW
This book 2 in the series is narrated and tells the story of Jick’s, of books 1 & 3, grandfather. It explains how the man Angus, fell in love with a woman who became the mother of Jick’s father’s wife by another man. Why that grandmother returned to Scotland when her husband died. Marrying your best friend’s sister leads to complications when that relationship and business partnership sours. All three books examine the often inharmonious relationships between fathers and sons.
A dissertation on farming.
My reading brings to mind the precarious nature of farm life. There is Davie, the young lad who gets thrown from his horse and dragged by a boot caught in the stirrups under the animal’s heels and survives to be maimed for life. Or Barclay who drowns with Angus’ old horse for similar reasons. The National Forest that gets imposed on the region restricting the sheep-herder’s grazing rights. [Think Brokeback Mountain and Annie Proulx.] The plus side being employment for Varick and a stop to the herds of cattle the local conglomerate was sneaking onto those grasslands. The hundreds of thousands of (home)steaders who settled on marginal land and were starved out when the drought years came. Read Steinbeck. The hot dry summers when grazing land was sparse and the following long cold deep winter when feed was scarce for sheep and cattle alike that died of starvation and exposure. The crash of prices when the War ended and the later depression years.
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