This House of Sky

Ivan Doig’s memoir about his upbringing in the rural stretches of Montana, This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind examines his life herding cattle, his family's struggle to maintain themselves in the wake of grief, and Doig's understanding of his upbringing as a relic of American culture – no longer relevant, despite its once prominent role in the foundations of American life. Doig depicts hometown as a mystical, sometimes hilarious, always beautiful place, drawing connections between his life as a white collar man in Seattle in the contemporary world to his idyllic, though grief-stricken upbringing in the high plains.

Doig begins his story with a description of his childhood home. Montana is known as the big sky state; Doig capitalizes on this, naming his home after the never-ending, wide-open sky under which he was born. Much of the book is a lyrical meditation on the nature of this upbringing, and on the foundational nature of landscape and culture on one's understanding of the world. Doig was raised on a cattle ranch, and he spent much of his time outside under the wide Montana skies, herding cattle and sheep.

When Doig was six his mother died suddenly, leaving most of his memories motherless, and the ones he did have of his mother distant and hard to validate. Doig's father, Chris, devastated at the loss of his wife, became increasingly unable to care for Doig. Doig spent two years living with relatives nearby, who helped ease some of the financial burden his father was experiencing but did little to assuage his grief or to provide emotional support. After two years of slowly recovering his livelihood and his will to live, Chris took his son back in, and Doig's childhood continued, though this time without a mother to comfort him.



In lieu of a mother, Doig's father and grandmother became steadfast beacons of hope for him, providing the financial and emotional support he needed to grow and learn. Doig writes about trekking long distances to crossroads on the high plains where he would catch a bus to attend school many dozens of miles away. Much of the memoir is a portrait of life in rural Montana, where Doig experienced the bizarre and eclectic nature of saloons and their inhabitants, met cowboys, sheepherders, and other local characters, and frequently visited neighbors’ personal libraries to fulfill his love of storytelling and reading. His teachers were also supportive of his interest in writing, influencing his life and his understanding of the world alongside tales of traveling between cattle ranches and sleeping for months in a stranger's front room while moving cows from one pasture to another.

Each chapter ends with long reminiscences about the nature of memory, childhood and its influence on adult life, the power of family, and how a place can shape the preoccupations of the soul. These reminiscences are marked in italics, taking a poetic twist from the more straightforward narrative of the other sections. They contain the primary meaning behind the text, however, allowing Doig to float through the significance of these moments, what it means to remember them, and how they color the mythic, dreamlike atmosphere of his childhood home.

Near the end of the book, Doig makes a clear transition from the ranching, rural boy that he was to the white-collar man he grew into. Now living in Seattle, he writes about the comfort of Seattle's landscape, warmed by the ocean but shielded in storms by the shape of the land. Contrasting with the hard-scrabble nature of his childhood, in this reflection on place, it is possible to see how Doig has grown, and what he has learned to value.



Ivan Doig was an American author of non-fiction and novels set on the frontiers of the American West, which focused on the lives of immigrant families, miners, fur trappers, schoolteachers, and other pioneers of the American West. Doig was raised in White Sulphur Springs, Montana and passed away in Seattle, Washington in 2015. His novels include English Creek, Work Song, and Last Bus to Wisdom, among many others, and his non-fiction titles include Heart Earth and Winter Brothers, as well as his most noted book, This House of Sky, which was nominated for the National Book Award. Doig was the recipient of dozens of awards, including a Willamette Writers Lifetime Achievement Award and a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship.