Heart Earth

Ivan Doig was surprised by his inheritance from his Uncle Wally in 1986. The packet of letters written by his beloved mother, Berneta, to her youngest brother in the last year of her short life was now his, 41 years after her death. They were the link to his past that he barely remembered--his fifth year of life lived in the Arizona desert and on a sheep ranch in Montana. Berneta died in the wee hours of Ivan's 6th birthday of an overworked heart due to her frequent and severe asthma attacks. No one in the family ever "got over" her death. Ivan's memories were sketchy but he wrote that the family was "pierced by my mother's death in the mountain cabin." The letters gave him details of their everyday life so he could piece together their show more last year and write this wonderful tribute to his mother.

I can't imagine receiving such a touching gift. In reading his mother's words, Ivan discovered where his love for writing came from. He cleverly used this window to his past by quoting both from the letters and from the logbook of the destroyer USS Ault where Uncle Wally served in the last years of WWII. The juxtaposition of war stories and ranch stories was jarring, but it added context to Doig's early years. For those of us who read and loved This House of Sky, Doig's memoir of his later childhood, this prequel gives us a better understanding of Ivan's closeness to his mother.

The winter the young Doig family spent in Arizona was so interesting. Ivan's father proved he would do anything for his young wife. Berneta writes to Wally: I always thought a desert was just nothing, but I have changed my mind. It is really beautiful here, in the desert way… When the young family's desert experiment was over and they returned to Montana, they all learned that this would be their forever home..."What can account for my mother's high spirits at being back in that drafty mousy attic of Montana, the mile-up-and-then-some Big Belt country where sour winter stayed on past the spring dance? …Earth and Heart don't have much of a membrane between them. Sometimes decided on grounds as elusive as that simple transposable h, this matter of siting ourselves. Of a place mysteriously insisting itself into us." (Pg. 80)

Do yourself a favor and spend an afternoon or evening reading this remarkable book by and about a beloved Montana author. show less

Ivan Doig here hits his stride, leading from the slow moving and uneven memoirs of House of Sky and Winter Brothers,
into the evolution of his novels.

Letters willed to him from his Uncle Wally guide the progression from the Montana mountains to the Arizona deserts,
as the Family deals with Bernata's asthma and Charlie's recovery.

(Map, oh Map, Our Kingdom for a Map...!)

I was drawn to Ivan's tenderhearted Grandma, rather than to his Trapline Mother -
how Ivan could be proud of her cruelty is hard to understand.

As well, the glee of the murdered coyotes delivers another unwelcome image.

In this beautiful, short book, Ivan Doig teaches us that ‘heart’ and ‘earth’ are separated only by a single transposable h.

This book is the prequel to Doig’s memoir, House of Sky. It tells the story of Doig’s mother, Berneta Ringer Doig, in the year immediately prior to her death when Ivan was five years old.

It is based on letters written by Berneta to her brother who was serving in WWll aboard the USS Ault. Many years after her death and after the publication of This House of Sky, Doig’s uncle gave these previously unknown letters to Doig. So we see the events described in this book both through the memories of a small sensitive boy whose only companions were grownups and the boy’s mother.

Berneta battled both asthma show more and the hardships of a remote, hardscrabble sheep ranch; her love of words shine through the letters she wrote sixty years earlier and through her son’s memories.

Doig marvels that although he lost his mother at such a young age, he finds such pieces of his mother’s soul in his own.

This book is a wonderful portrait of a family enduring hard times and is well worth the read. show less

Very good memoir told in an interesting and unusual fashion. Ivan's mother died when he had just turned 6 years of age. As time moved on his memories of her were pretty dim. Much later in life he was bequeathed a collection of letters upon the death of his Uncle Wally. These were letters that his mother had written to her brother who served on a navy destroyer. Together with Ivan's own memories and historical knowledge he recreates and shows us the hardships of the early and WWII home-front life they went through. We know that Ivan's mother dies, but when it happens it is a sudden shock.

Besides the immediate family, we also learn a little about Uncle Wally. Wally is serving in the Pacific on the USS Ault, a destroyer in the Pacific. show more Little missives are included from Wally's letters through the book. Then we come to the Battle of Okinawa when the Japanese filled the skies with Kamikazes. An entry from the Ault's log describes two kamikazes slamming into the nearby carrier "Bunker Hill", causing many hundreds of casualties. It really affected me as a reader.

This is a short book and a fairly quick read. I really liked this a lot. It stirs one's soul a bit. The language in here is kind of fun to chew on. I haven't read one of Doig's novels in a long time. I need to work on that. show less

I love the way Ivan Doig writes, lyrically and concisely evoking a whole world of feeling; he sees such humor, poetry, and intensity in each moment and place. Somehow he notices everything.. A sweet, sad, funny memoir of his childhood and his mother.

4.5 Just a beautiful tribute to his parents, especially his mother. I appreciate the evenness of Doig's writing. I am never disappointed and I will be sad when I've read the last one of his books.

A lovely book. Doig used the few letters from his mother to her brother, his sketchy memories from before he was six, and probably some family stories and research to come up with this story about his mother. Touching, inspiring, poignant, and beautiful writing. A very good picture of life in extremely rural America during WWII, although that is not the focus, just a circumstance.