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Summary
Summary
From one of the greatest novelists of the American West comes a surprising and riveting story set in Montana and New York during the Harlem Renaissance, drawing together an unlikely set of thwarted performers in one last inspired grasp at life's set of gold rings: love and renown.Susan Duff -- the bossy, indomitable schoolgirl with a silver voice from the pages of Doig's most popular work, Dancing at the Rascal Fair -- has reached middle age alone, teaching voice lessons to the progeny of Helena's high society. Wesley Williamson -- business scion of a cattle-empire family -- has fallen from the heights of gubernatorial aspirations, forced out of a public career by political foes who uncovered his love affair with Susan. Years later, Susan is taken off guard when Wes arrives at her door with an unusual request: to train his chauffeur, Monty, in the ways of voice and performance.Prairie Nocturne is the saga of these three people and their interlocked destinies. Monty is distantly known to Susan from their childhoods in the Two Medicine country, yet an enforced stranger because of the racial divide. When she realizes he possesses a singing voice of rare splendor, Susan joins Wes's Pygmalion-like project to launch Monty on a performing career -- only to find the full force of the Ku Klux Klan in their way. As Monty and Susan overcome treacherous obstacles, Wes's mysterious motives unsettle everyone, including himself, and the trio's crossed fates form a deeply longitudinal novel that raises everlasting questions of allegiance, the grip of the past, and the costs of career and passion.
Author Notes
Ivan Doig was born in White Sulphur Springs, Montana in 1939. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in history from University of Washington. Before becoming an author, he worked as a ranch hand and a journalist.
His non-fiction works include This House of Sky, Winter Brothers, and Heart Earth. His fiction titles include English Creek, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, Bucking the Sun, The Whistling Season, The Bartender's Tale, and Last Bus to Wisdom. He received several awards including the Western Literature Association's Lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award and the Wallace Stegner Award in 2007. He died of multiple myeloma on April 8, 2015 at the age of 75.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In his rambling, sluggishly paced seventh novel, noted western novelist Doig explores the discord that racism sows in the Montana wilderness during the Roaring 20s. Susan Duff, the schoolgirl nightingale from his Montana trilogy's middle book, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, is now in her 40th year, unmarried, working in Helena giving singing lessons to the upper crust. Her former adulterous lover, the charismatic WWI hero and once gubernatorial hopeful Wes Williamson, reappears and persuades Susan to abandon her other students in order to develop the untrained voice of his African-American chauffeur, Monty Rathbun, with an eye to putting him on the professional stage. Because Monty is black, Susan moves the lessons to the seclusion of her family ranch in mountainous Two Medicine country. But overnight prosperity from oil and copper has brought motorcars and telephones, so secrets are not easily kept. Soon, the KKK makes its presence felt, and Susan's home is vandalized. Though Wes quickly routs the bigots, Monty flees, resurfacing in New York during the Harlem Renaissance, where he attains overnight celebrity as a singer of spirituals. Of course, for black men and adulterous lovers in the 1920s, the course of fame and secret passion is still fraught with peril, and more trouble lies in wait for all. The fine plot is disrupted by frequent flashbacks, paeans to unspoiled landscape, Scottish genealogy and western lore, but those who don't mind digressive storytelling will appreciate yet another Montana saga from one of the state's best-known chroniclers. 11-city author tour. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Doig returns to several of the characters from his much-loved Dancing at the Rascal Fair (1987) in this gripping story set not only in Montana's Two Medicine country, the landscape indelibly associated with the author, but also in New York during the Harlem Renaissance. It's 1924, and Susan Duff, the headstrong schoolgirl from Rascal Fair, is now a middle-aged voice teacher in Helena, resigned to spinsterhood after her affair with gubernatorial candidate Wes Williamson cost him the election. Then Wes seeks her out with a proposition: teach his black chauffeur, Monty, to sing. Returning to Two Medicine country, Susan does just that, as the narrative twists and turns its way back into the pasts of the three principal characters and ahead into their shared futures in New York: Monty on the concert stage and Susan and Wes, their relationship still tumultuous, in the wings. As always, Doig incorporates a vast amount of fascinating historical material into his personal drama: the story of the Buffalo soldiers of the tenth cavalry in the late nineteenth century; the saga of the Ku Klux Klan's incursion into Montana; and, of course, the Harlem Renaissance itself. The heart of the matter, though, is the three-sided relationship among Susan, Wes, and Monty; skirting the melodrama into which this triptych might easily have tumbled, Doig tightens the reins on his sometimes mannered prose and constructs a subtle, highly textured love story, nicely balancing period detail and well-modulated emotion. --Bill Ott Copyright 2003 Booklist
Kirkus Review
Another atmospheric Montana drama from Doig (Mountain Times, 1999, etc.), this one taking a side trip to Manhattan during the Harlem Renaissance as it portrays three strong, self-willed protagonists grappling with racial prejudice and their own emotions. Susan Duff, last seen as a schoolgirl in Dancing at the Rascal Fair (1987), is now a 40-year-old singing teacher in Helena, contentedly alone years after her affair with wealthy, married Wes Williamson cost him the Montana gubernatorial race. Wes walks back into her life on a March evening in 1924 to ask if he can hire Susan to coach his chauffeur, Monty Rathbun. Monty has an extraordinary voice, but he's also the son of an African-American soldier who later went to work for the Williamsons. There aren't many colored folks in Montana, but there is a branch of the Ku Klux Klan, which decides that Susan isn't just giving Monty singing lessons and threatens them both. Monty heads to Harlem, where he begins making a name with his "spirit songs" and acquires a Negro manager who sends him on the road. An attack by a KKK wannabe in Helena damages his voice and leaves him vulnerable enough to confess that he's fallen in love with his coach; Susan, though again involved with Wes, realizes her feelings for Monty are also strong. Ushering his characters toward a climactic concert at Carnegie Hall, Doig does his usual splendid job of interweaving several time frames to bring alive American history and to chart the evolving relationships of thorny, independent people who love fiercely but never go easy on one another or themselves. His marvelously idiosyncratic sentences have the bite of mountain air and the springy rhythms of mountain folks' speech, but they're also more disciplined and less gnarled than in some past work. It all combines to create a compelling story that ends too soon--but given Doig's career-long fondness for revisiting the intertwined families of Montana's Two Medicine country, we can perhaps hope to see Susan, Wes, and Monty (or at least their relatives) again. Fine work from a quintessentially American writer. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Doig's seventh novel, again set in Montana at the turn of the 20th century, is a sequel to earlier works (e.g., Bucking the Sun). Susan Duff, ever the recalcitrant singer, is now approaching middle age and living alone after a love affair with the wealthy Wesley Williamson. When Williamson's chauffeur, former rodeo clown Montgomery Rathbun, comes to him with the idea of honing his vocal talents, Williamson brings him to Susan. But Monty is black, and when he and Susan begin late-night voice lessons in a secluded cabin, thinking no one the wiser, its revelation incites the local Ku Klux Klan. Monty flees to New York, where he establishes a brilliant career as a singer of spirituals. On a concert tour back out west, however, old feuds reignite. Astute observers will recognize many of the plot lines of the Elvis Presley movie Jailhouse Rock, and the book would indeed make a good film. It's also an amiable enough read. Recommended for collections strong in Western literature.-Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib. of New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
