Doig: Maybe the movies will come calling

Ivan Doig , who is out on the road hawking his new novel “The Whistling Season,” is already at work on a new novel. This one is set during World War II and involves the pilots, some of whom were women, who ferried airplanes to Fairbanks as part of the Lend Lease program between the U.S. and Russia.

“Fighter planes, and B-17 bombers , were flown fresh from the factories to Great Falls (Mont. And two other northern-tier bases), and then they were hopped up across Canada and ultimately to Fairbanks,” Doig says. The Russians “would take those airplanes and fly them across Siberia and take them to the Eastern Front. ”

His characters include a woman pilot – “The women did ferry the fighter aircraft to some of these bases,” he said – and a “male military war correspondent.”

“I can’t tell you much more of the plot,” Doig says. “But he’s on an assignment from a kind of a shadowy government agency. He’s never quite clear what they’re up to, what they’re having him do.”

And, he adds, “So it’s a pretty sizeable novel. It gives me a chance to write both about Montana and have a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness and guys from our part of the world, how they’re thrust into theaters of combat. And the women involved.”

Clearly, I tell him, he’s thinking about movie rights.

“I am not! I am not, damnit!” Doig shouts in mock wrath. “You know, if you think about it, you jinx ’em, Dan.”

Yet, he adds, “I must say that both my editor and my agent, when they saw the one-page on this one, that’s what they thought.”

“Really?” I ask.

“Yeah, really!” Doing answers. “It quite surprised me. I’ll believe it when I see it.”