Bucking The Sun

Ivan Doig, “Bucking The Sun,” Simon & Schuster, 1996, 412 pp.
Some time ago I read an excellent book by this author, “The Whistling Season”, and this led me to read others by him. All these subsequent books, at first blush, have disappointed me but, then, why do I keep reading them? I fear I like them more than I like to admit. I do know the author does his homework and accurately describes the times and, in this case, the building of a dam.

“Bucking The Sun” begins in 1938 with a truck pulled from the Missouri River at the Fort Peck Dam in Montana. There are two naked Duff family bodies in the cab—a man and a woman, married, but not to each other. Now that’s a good beginning and certainly gets your interest. The book goes on and describes the building of the Fort Peck dam, the largest earthen dam in the world which employs 10,000 people desperately in need of work. The Duff family and their parts in building this dam moves the book from chapter to chapter; the Duff characters are: the father and mother, Meg and Hugh; a son and wife, Bruce and Kate; another son and wife, Rosellen and Neil; the oldest son Owen who is a prominent engineer on the construction site and his wife Charlene; Darius the brother of Hugh and an apparent Communist party member along with his very colorful wife, the taxi dancer Proxy.