There are some folks who write clean and crisp prose with a snap to it like
sheets fresh from the sunshine. And there are some who write melodies that
flow from the page into the mind, dancing rhyme and rhythm into a story that
lasts and lasts. But the really good writers can do both. Ivan Doig is one
of those.

Dancing at the Rascal Fair is the story of two friends, Rob Barclay and
Angus McCaskill, who emigrate from Scotland in 1889 to become sheep ranchers
in the high country of Montana. They are young bucks in a new land believing
that a canny mind and hard work will make them successful. They have left
behind the poverty and harshness of life in Scotland for the promise and
harshness of life homesteading. And in it they find joy. But it takes a
hardpan spirit to survive undamaged the brutality of the winters near the
mountains and the hard life of a sheep rancher and Angus McCaskill is of
softer soil than that. A rift develops between the two friends, widened by
Angus’ love of a woman he can’t have and Rob’s inability to accept that his
friend is not able to bounce with the same gusto he does. The story of the
rift between these two friends who are closer than brothers is what forms the
core of the book. The story of Montana and the forests and mountains in the
west is the background that it is played against.

This was actually my third time thru the book. I bought it soon after it
came out in 1987 on a whim in the bookstore and read it thru once. A few
years back I picked it off the bookshelf to see if it was as excellent as I
remembered and it was. And lately NPR has featured it on “Chapter a Day”
which brought back to me the musical quality of the language that Doig uses
to tell his story. It reads aloud incredibly well. At first I thought it was
the phrasing that he uses that was so wonderful, almost like a Scots burr
rolling off the r’s and broadening the vowels with snippets of Bobbie Burns
woven in to pick out the colors. But this time thru what I really noticed is
that the story plays out almost as if there is a fiddle playing highland
music in the background, faintly picking up tempo or going down to the deep
notes as the story unfolds. I have rarely read a writer with Doig’s facile
touch with language. It was a true pleasure.