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Ivan Doig, Montana-bred author of ‘This House of Sky,’ dies at 75

This undated image released by Riverhead Books shows author Ivan Doig. (Associated Press)
Christine Clarridge Seattle Times

Ivan Doig, an award-winning author of 16 books, died Thursday in his Seattle home after a long illness. He was 75.

Doig was in some critical ways much like the ordinary heroes he wrote about, the ones who got up each day, worked hard and did the best they could with what they had, said his widow, Carol Doig.

“He didn’t have time for regret or angst,” she said. “He went to his desk and worked.”

Doig’s last four novels – including “Last Bus to Wisdom,” which will be published in August – were written after he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma eight years ago, according to Glory Anne Plata, senior publicist at Riverhead Books, which published some of Doig’s books.

Author David Laskin, a friend of Doig, said, “Ivan Doig was the consummate professional writer – a man of infinite imagination and equally infinite conscientiousness.”

“Though Ivan wrote mostly fiction in recent years, he was meticulous about getting everything exactly right – from the most minute period detail to the ‘feel’ of a place in time. Every word he published had the ring of truth. He was tough but he knew how to enjoy himself, and a big part of that enjoyment came from hanging out with fellow writers and nurturing them along.”

Doig, an only child, was born on June 27, 1939, and grew up along the Rocky Mountain front in Montana, where many of his stories are set.

His mother, Berneta Ringer Doig, died when he was 6, and he was raised by his father, ranch hand Charlie Doig, and his maternal grandmother.

Propelled by encouragement from a number of teachers and eager to pursue a career more promising than his father’s, Doig earned a full ride to Northwestern University where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism.

It was there, while he was teaching a summer journalism program, that he met the woman who would become his wife and partner.

He was solid and grounded and hard-working and no-nonsense. He believed in fairness and that everybody should get a fair break. He did not put on airs or strut around even once he’d made a name for himself, Carol Doig said.

“He was the kind of guy you could depend on, and I did for 50 years,” she said.

Doig worked at several newspapers, including one in Decatur, Illinois – where he said he came to understand John Keats’ phrase “amid the alien corn” – but found that he was drawn to writing books, according to one of his posts on his website.

He and his wife moved to the Seattle area after he was accepted at the University of Washington, where he earned his Ph.D in history.

Carol Doig, also a graduate of Northwestern’s journalism school, worked for the Herald of Everett and taught at Shoreline Community College. She also helped research and edit her husband’s books.

Plata said in a news release that Doig believed ordinary people deserve to have their stories told, and he did that in fact and fiction, beginning with “This House of Sky,” a memoir of his own upbringing in Montana.

The book attracted a wide readership and was a finalist for the National Book Award. He later wrote a second memoir, “Heart Earth,” which his widow described as his most-overlooked book. But it was for his painstakingly researched and historically accurate novels that he won enduring readership and acclaim.

Two late novels, “The Bartender’s Tale” and the yet-to-be-published “Last Bus to Wisdom,” were inspired by his childhood and came as close to autobiography as Doig ever got in his fiction.

In them, he writes of his father’s habit of taking him along to the saloons where he liked to hire on haying crews; of losing his mother and being raised by his father and his ranch-cook grandmother.

“Ivan Doig has been, from ‘This House of Sky,’ his first grand entry into literature, one of the great American voices, full of grace, abounding in humanity, easeful in narration, hypnotic in pace, grand in range,” said Australian novelist Thomas Keneally.