Ride with Me, Mariah Montana

by Ivan Doig (Penguin Books, 1990)

If you've poked around in the "road-warrior" section of my website (e.g., my observations of the Polson Parade), you know that I have a warm spot in my heart for Montana. I've read through a couple of other Montana-oriented novels in the past couple years that I'll be adding to this section sooner or later, but Ride with Me, Mariah Montana is the first to be so recorded.

This is a wonderful story of a crusty, widowed, 65-year-old sheep rancher, Jick McCaskill, who gets harrassed into serving as the chauffeur for his daughter, Mariah, and her obnoxious ex-husband Riley Wright on a 3-month driving tour of Montana. The tour is part of a series of articles (written by Riley) and photographs (snapped by Mariah) commissioned by the newspaper that Riley and Mariah work for, in honor of the 1989 state Centennial celebration. It involves criss-crossing the state and observing a thousand details that I recorded in a much more superficial and limited way in my essay on Leaving Montana. The human drama that builds up throughout the story is relatively low-key, but presented in a credible and humorous fashion: will Mariah and Rick patch up their busted marriage? Will Jick find a way to get over the loss of his wife, and move on with his life? Will all of them figure out how to fit their lives and their futures into the high points and low points of the Montana economy, landscape, and culture?

If you've never been to Montana, you might not care about any of this -- in which case, don't waste your time or money buying the book. But if you've noticed that quite a few of your otherwise sensible friends get a dreamy look in their eyes and a soft smile on their face whenever there's a mention of Montana, and if you've ever wondered what on earth might attract everyone from Jane Fonda to the Unabomber to this strange state ... well, Ivan Doig won't answer all your questions, but he'll begin to give you a taste for what the "Big Sky" country is really all about.