Doig brings his talent for the past to Spokane

Ivan Doig is a shepherd of the past.

The 11 books he has written so far are, for the most part, studies of Montana that range from the earliest homesteaders of the late 19th century (“Dancing at the Rascal Fair”) to a road-trip homage to the 1989 statehood centennial celebration (“Ride With Me, Maria Montana”).

Yet all of the books, including “The Whistling Season” – his most recent novel, and the one he will read from Monday at Auntie’s Bookstore – tackle themes that are as old as history itself.

Doig writes of family. He writes of love, both between people and that of rancher/farmers for their land. He writes of loyalty and obligation and independence and pretty much every concept that constitutes the way we see the American West, past and present.

And he writes about specific moments, of particular occurrences and the effect both have on his characters. As he admitted in a recent phone interview, “I like to (work) things off events that affect the laws of gravity in people’s lives.”

Timing is of particular importance to “The Whistling Season.” Each of its bookend dates marks an astronomical event of the 20th century: The book opens just six months before Halley’s Comet appeared in April 1910.

But the narrator, Paul Milliron, tells the story from the perspective of his character in 1957, which was when the former Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the Earth.

In 1909, Paul is 13 and one of three brothers being raised by a widower who changes all their lives by answering a curious newspaper ad placed by a housekeeper looking for work.

The ad says simply, “Can’t Cook But Doesn’t Bite.”

“The book really started with ‘Can’t Cook But Doesn’t Bite,’ ” Doig said. “That popped in my head one day, and I supposed I began thinking, ‘What if somebody answered an ad that said that and who could it be?’ “

From there, Doig introduces us to characters who will become important to the book’s plot: Rose, the housekeeper, and her brother Morris.

Paul, who is hungry to learn, will be particularly affected. With the teacher of the one-room schoolhouse having taken off with an itinerant preacher, Morris assumes her duties.

“We all know the story of ‘Elmer Gantry,’ ” Doig said, “those guys were often crooning the ‘Song of Solomon’ as a kind of advance to the local ladies. So I thought, ‘OK, why don’t we have his frumpy teacher run off with the preacher. It’ll give the kids something to say: “Did you hear? Teacher ran off with the preacher?” ‘ And that opened up the school for Morrie to come in and really get things going.”

As author Rick Bass wrote about Morris in his review for Publishers Weekly, “The verve and inspiration that he, an utter novice to the West, to children and to teaching children, brings to the task is told brilliantly and passionately, and is the core of the book’s narrative, with its themes of all the different ways of knowing and learning, at any age.”

At the other end of the story, looking back at all that has occurred, 60-something Paul is now superintendent of Montana’s schools. And, to his sorrow, he is faced with making financial decisions that will profoundly affect the very educational system that nurtured him as a boy.

Yet what is most notable about “The Whistling Season” is not so much what happens but how Doig describes it.

“Doig’s writerly ambition is less in plotting than evoking, and it is his obvious pleasure to re-create from the ground up – or the sky down – a prior world, a prior way of being,” wrote Sven Birkerts for The New York Times Book Review.

The result, Birkerts summed up, is a novel that, in the end, is “a deeply meditated and achieved art.”

Carrying a June 1 publication date, “The Whistling Season” is already in its fourth printing.

“The book is a national best seller among the independent stores, the BookSense people,” Doig said, a note of curiosity sounding in his voice.

Which just goes to show: Doig may have the power to capture the past, but he’s as clueless as anyone about the vagaries of the publishing future.

“Frankly, I’m quite surprised by this one,” he said with a laugh. “Beats hell out of me.”