
Dancing at the Rascal Fair
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Narrated by:
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Robert Ian MacKenzie
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By:
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Ivan Doig
About this listen
Dancing at the Rascal Fair by National Book Award nominee Ivan Doig, captures the passion and tenacity of turn-of-the-century immigrants struggling to build new lives amidst Montana’s windswept Rockies. The tale unfolds into a contest of the heart between Anna Ramsay and Angus McCaskill—kept apart by obligations—as they and their stormy kin vie to tame the brutal land.
©1987 Ivan Doig (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLCListeners also enjoyed...
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Early work by a favorite author
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Often hailed as the heir apparent to Wallace Stegner, Ivan Doig is among the finest chroniclers of the contemporary American West. In Mountain Time, Lexa McCaskell and Mitch Rozier leave their Seattle home to visit Mitch’s dying father in Montana. There Mitch clashes with both Lexa and his father as events from the past are explored and difficult memories resurface.
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A Time in the Mountains.
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National Book Award finalist Ivan Doig writes about Big Sky country with raw authenticity. Set during the 1920s, Prairie Nocturne finds Susan Duff, the young songbird from Doig’s Dancing at the Rascal Fair, now a middle-aged singing coach living in Helena. When her old flame, Wes Williamson, asks her to mentor his black chauffeur, Monty, she agrees. But racial tensions erupt when Susan’s private lessons with Monty attract the attention of the KKK.
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Last Bus to Wisdom
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Story
The final novel from a great American storyteller. Donal Cameron is being raised by his grandmother, the cook at the legendary Double W ranch in Ivan Doig's beloved Two Medicine Country of the Montana Rockies, a landscape that gives full rein to an 11-year-old's imagination. But when Gram has to have surgery for "female trouble" in the summer of 1951, all she can think to do is to ship Donal off to her sister in faraway Manitowoc, Wisconsin.
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- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
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A nominee for the National Book Award, Ivan Doig's brilliant memoir shares the experiences and culture that shaped his early years and made him fall in love with the West. From his childhood in a family of homesteaders through the death of his mother and his move to Montana to herd sheep, Doig shows his intimate connection with the American West.
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Overall
-
Performance
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Not to my liking!
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By: Ivan Doig
-
Last Bus to Wisdom
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- By: Ivan Doig
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
- Length: 15 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The final novel from a great American storyteller. Donal Cameron is being raised by his grandmother, the cook at the legendary Double W ranch in Ivan Doig's beloved Two Medicine Country of the Montana Rockies, a landscape that gives full rein to an 11-year-old's imagination. But when Gram has to have surgery for "female trouble" in the summer of 1951, all she can think to do is to ship Donal off to her sister in faraway Manitowoc, Wisconsin.
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Critic reviews
People who viewed this also viewed...
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- A Novel
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- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
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- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
-
Story
The final novel from a great American storyteller. Donal Cameron is being raised by his grandmother, the cook at the legendary Double W ranch in Ivan Doig's beloved Two Medicine Country of the Montana Rockies, a landscape that gives full rein to an 11-year-old's imagination. But when Gram has to have surgery for "female trouble" in the summer of 1951, all she can think to do is to ship Donal off to her sister in faraway Manitowoc, Wisconsin.
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Such a lovely final book.
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By: Ivan Doig
-
Sweet Thunder: A Novel
- By: Ivan Doig
- Narrated by: Jonathan Hogan
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the winter of 1920, a quirky bequest draws Morrie Morgan back to Butte, Montana, from a year-long honeymoon with his bride, Grace. But the mansion bestowed by a former boss upon the itinerant charmer, debuted in Doig’s best-selling book The Whistling Season, promises to be less a windfall than a money pit. And the town itself, with its polyglot army of miners struggling to extricate themselves from the stranglehold of the ruthless Anaconda Copper Mining Company, seems - like the couple’s fast-diminishing finances—on the verge of implosion.
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- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A nominee for the National Book Award, Ivan Doig's brilliant memoir shares the experiences and culture that shaped his early years and made him fall in love with the West. From his childhood in a family of homesteaders through the death of his mother and his move to Montana to herd sheep, Doig shows his intimate connection with the American West.
-
-
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By: Ivan Doig
-
English Creek
- The Montana Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Ivan Doig
- Narrated by: Scott Sowers
- Length: 14 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Part of Ivan Doig’s acclaimed Montana trilogy, English Creek revolves around Jick McCaskill, a 14-year-old growing up in 1930s Montana. This incandescent coming-of-age tale dramatizes the climatic events of one summer that inevitably mark Jick’s awakening from childhood to adulthood.
-
-
Read this as book two and Dancing as book one
- By Blue on 05-21-13
By: Ivan Doig
-
The Whistling Season
- By: Ivan Doig
- Narrated by: Jonathan Hogan
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1909, struggling to farm his remote homestead and raise three sons, widower Oliver Milliron desperately needs help. A housekeeper’s ad in a Milwaukee newspaper, “Can’t cook but doesn’t bite,” leads him to hire her sight unseen. When perky Rose Llewellyn arrives, she brings along her brainy brother, Morris. Though Rose whistles through her work at the Milliron house, and Morris becomes teacher at the one-room school, these two newcomers conceal a past that is colorful and infamous.
-
-
A Gem
- By MetaDreaming on 12-30-24
By: Ivan Doig
-
The Bartender's Tale
- By: Ivan Doig
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Bartender' s Tale stars Tom Harry and his 12-year-old son, Rusty, who live alone and run a bar in a small Montana town in the early 1960s. Their lives are upended when Proxy, a woman from Tom's past, and her beatnik daughter, Francine, breeze into town. Is Francine, as Proxy claims, the unsuspected legacy of her and Tom’s past? Without a doubt she is an unsettling gust of the future, upending every certainty in Rusty’s life and generating a mist of passion and pretense that seems to obscure everyone’s vision but his own.
-
-
If you love a good story ...
- By B.J. on 03-08-13
By: Ivan Doig
-
Last Bus to Wisdom
- A Novel
- By: Ivan Doig
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
- Length: 15 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The final novel from a great American storyteller. Donal Cameron is being raised by his grandmother, the cook at the legendary Double W ranch in Ivan Doig's beloved Two Medicine Country of the Montana Rockies, a landscape that gives full rein to an 11-year-old's imagination. But when Gram has to have surgery for "female trouble" in the summer of 1951, all she can think to do is to ship Donal off to her sister in faraway Manitowoc, Wisconsin.
-
-
Such a lovely final book.
- By B.J. on 02-26-16
By: Ivan Doig
-
Sweet Thunder: A Novel
- By: Ivan Doig
- Narrated by: Jonathan Hogan
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the winter of 1920, a quirky bequest draws Morrie Morgan back to Butte, Montana, from a year-long honeymoon with his bride, Grace. But the mansion bestowed by a former boss upon the itinerant charmer, debuted in Doig’s best-selling book The Whistling Season, promises to be less a windfall than a money pit. And the town itself, with its polyglot army of miners struggling to extricate themselves from the stranglehold of the ruthless Anaconda Copper Mining Company, seems - like the couple’s fast-diminishing finances—on the verge of implosion.
-
-
Ivan Doig at his best
- By Mama bear on 02-01-14
By: Ivan Doig
-
This House of Sky
- Landscapes of a Western Mind
- By: Ivan Doig
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A nominee for the National Book Award, Ivan Doig's brilliant memoir shares the experiences and culture that shaped his early years and made him fall in love with the West. From his childhood in a family of homesteaders through the death of his mother and his move to Montana to herd sheep, Doig shows his intimate connection with the American West.
-
-
Early work by a favorite author
- By Doggy Bird on 09-06-14
By: Ivan Doig
What listeners say about Dancing at the Rascal Fair
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Overall
- Haner Family
- 05-25-16
My favorite story!
Great reader for a grand story! I'm soon on the the second of the trilogy.
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- Darrell HANSCHEN
- 03-08-22
Not as good as Whistling Season
This is an enjoyable book with lots of memorable characters. Plot wise it’s kinda slow, but if you like a character-driven novel with an interesting setting and historical background, you’ll probably like this book. The reader is fantastic. His Missouri voice is spot-on.
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- smarch43
- 09-16-24
Loved it
The narrator made the book. I read it many years ago but having the Scottish accent added to the story.
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Overall
- Diana Prince
- 12-14-10
I Loved This Book
This is a low-key, kind of slow-moving (in a good way) book, but it is a well-written, engaging story of human life. Despite its length, I was sorry when it was over. My only complaint was that I found the sort of Gone-With-The-Wind ongoing "love" story a bit overblown but that is a very minor complaint. This was a very good listen and I highly recommend it.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Lynn
- 09-14-12
Overall it was wonderful.
What did you love best about Dancing at the Rascal Fair?
Great experience and in new history for me. Times were slow but overall sweet an enjoyable.
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- Babs
- 09-02-20
If you have ever been in Montana...
As others mentioned, this book has a bit of a slow start, but is so evocative of Northern Montana. Wonderful descriptions, interesting history. The underlying "love story" is somewhat irritating, but the relationships among the other characters are complex and keep the story alive
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- SP
- 01-09-24
Don’t miss this in lightning and intense book with a fabulous reader
This book is historical, plot, building, and character study. The book brings out the historical background of shepherds from Scotland and Life in the Montana mountains. It will not be a book that will be forgotten. The reader had the grand Scottish Voice. He made each character sound different so it could be followed of who was speaking. It was like going to the movies. And much better. 
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- Kathy in CA
- 01-31-11
An all-time favorite
A beautifully written and narrated book that leaves me missing the characters and their lives, wishing there could be more. Doig did a masterful job creating his characters and their truly believable stories. I savored every moment and never felt the pace was too slow. It made me happy, it made me sad, it made me want more. I will definitely read another of Doig's books. Narrator was wonderful, too.
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- David West
- 04-14-21
Very well written. Very frustrating story.
Almost every sentence is interesting, with unique wording or turns of phrases throughout. One of the opening scenes of a cart horse falling into a Scottish bay and drowning was horrifying, colorful, and even morbidly humorous in the way onlookers joke about it. I was hooked from the beginning, ready for a rollicking story of Angus's journey and creating a new life in rugged Montana with his BFF Rob.
But the story doesn't deliver. Too much of the tale is told from inside Angus's head - his feelings, his memories, snippets of remembered poems and songs. By the second half of the novel we are even treated to Angus's remembered dialogue from the first half of the novel (really). Eventually much needed tension is introduced to the story when Anna (Angus's fiancé) tells him she has been horsing around with Isaac the horse trader, and that they will soon be hitched. But now Angus mopes and yearns for Anna the rest of the novel. And the reader is treated to even more of Angus's remembered dialogue with Anna from earlier parts of the story (yawn). Since he can't have Anna, Angus marries Adair (Rob's little sister who has since immigrated to Montana). As Adair is painfully aware, she is not Angus's first choice. Don't feel bad for her though, she has the annoying habit of referring to herself in the third person.
Ironically, the story ends with another drowning horse, this time taking Rob down with it. Don't feel bad for Rob though, by the end of the novel he has turned into a complete ass. The horse seemed decent enough.
Shout out to to some memorable characters: Ninian Duff (not affiliated with Duff Beer), Lucas, the hands-off bartender, and Toussaint, the half breed bar hand.
I'm partial to historical fiction, and I enjoyed the parts having to do with Scottish immigration to the US, sheep farming, the advent of the US Park Service, and the impact WW1 had on US soldiers and their families.
Overall though, this was a very unsatisfying story, but well told, if that makes sense.
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- Elizabeth
- 01-13-11
Terrific Book
This was the first Ivan Doig book I've read or listened to, and I really enjoyed it. The narrator was terrific, and the author's writing style is wonderful!
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