From Powells.com
Staff Pick
The final novel from one of the Northwest's most beloved writers, Ivan Doig's The Last Bus to Wisdom is the story of 11-year-old Donal Cameron and his travels across the country by Greyhound bus. Each of the characters Donal meets during his journey has stories to tell and insights to offer. Doig does a superb job of bringing this bygone era alive for the reader. Recommended By Mary Jo S., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Named a Best Book of the Year by the Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Kirkus Review
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 eleven-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. There Donal is in for a rude surprise: Aunt Kate–bossy, opinionated, argumentative, and tyrannical—is nothing like her sister. She henpecks her good-natured husband, Herman the German, and Donal can’t seem to get on her good side either. After one contretemps too many, Kate packs him back to the authorities in Montana on the next Greyhound. But as it turns out, Donal isn’t traveling solo: Herman the German has decided to fly the coop with him. In the immortal American tradition, the pair light out for the territory together, meeting a classic Doigian ensemble of characters and having rollicking misadventures along the way.
Charming, wise, and slyly funny, Last Bus to Wisdom is a last sweet gift from a writer whose books have bestowed untold pleasure on countless readers.
Review
"Doig has thoroughly engaged readers’ sympathies for his high-spirited yet vulnerable protagonist…Enjoyable coincidences abound, and a leisurely storyline with plenty of twists gives the author ample room to display his knack for vivid thumbnail sketches and bravura descriptions… A marvelous picaresque showing off the late Doig’s ready empathy for all kinds of people and his perennial gift for spinning a great yarn. He will be missed." Kirkus Reviews (starred Review)
Review
"[Last Bus] contains…[Doig’s] trademark wonderful writing about the Western landscape, and plenty of gentle humor…Doig will be missed by his many faithful readers, and for them, this last offering will be welcome and bittersweet." Portland Oregonian
Review
"The chimerical tale is moving, vivid and funny… Doig’s adolescent narrator recalls his literary cousins, Scout Finch, Augie March, Huck Finn, Claudia MacTeer, as his open-hearted curiosity provides readers a sense of unmediated engagement with an expanding world…Last Bus to Wisdom takes us back 65 years to an era when the West was a little more rugged and the ethos of wide, open spaces allowed for mythical endings." Chicago Tribune
Review
"[T]he true successor to the dean of Western writers, Wallace Stegner…Last Bus to Wisdom is a rambunctious adventure packed with color, vitality and characters worth rooting for… a masterful fusion of picaresque exploits and ripping yarns." The San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"With his final novel Doig aptly crowns a luminous literary legacy…Last Bus to Wisdom is a deeply humane coming-of-age tale set in the early 1950s…Forever the master of colorful characters and landscapes reflecting the vastness and vulnerability of the human heart, Doig has left us with a rollicking road trip filled with both." Seattle Times
Review
"One of Doig’s best novels…enchanting … It’s warming to think that in his final months [he] shared the writing hours with one of his greatest characters: a version of his younger self wound up and set spinning on the long zigzag adventure called life in the American West." The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Ivan Doig was born in Montana and grew up along the Rocky Mountain Front, the dramatic landscape that has inspired much of his writing. A former ranch hand, newspaperman, and magazine editor, with a Ph.D. in history, Doig was the beloved and award-winning author of thirteen novels and three works of nonfiction, including his classic first book, the memoir This House of Sky. He was a National Book Award finalist and received the Wallace Stegner Award, a Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western Literature Association, and multiple PNBA and MPBA Book Awards, among other honors. He died on April 9, 2015.