Dancing at the Rascal Fair is the second novel in Ivan Doig’s Montana Trilogy. The first was English Creek, which I read a few years ago. The main character in both books is the Two Medicine country in Montana at the turn of the twentieth century, where homesteaders endured harsh conditions that Doig vividly describes. I was not expecting Dancing to be a romance novel, and I almost abandoned the book at the halfway point. I grew weary of Angus McCaskill’s back-and-forth love life, a young Scottish immigrant to Montana who is better at raising sheep than deciding between two women who enter his life.
My persistence was rewarded as Doig painted a picture of struggle, love, family tragedy, and yearning amid the beauty of Big Sky Country in the final and exciting closing chapters. SPOILER ALERT: A boot caught in a stirrup brought an end to life and a new beginning for a long-neglected marriage.