ResoluteReader: Ivan Doig - Ride With Me, Mariah Montana

Tuesday, January 27, 2026

Ivan Doig - Ride With Me, Mariah Montana

Ride With Me, Mariah Montana is the final volume in Ivan Doig's English Creek trilogy. It's a sweeping history of Monata set in Doig's remote, and fictional, Two Medicine Country, nestled up near the top end of the Rocky Mountains. After the Native American's were displaced and destroyed it was a part of the world built on sheep, cattle and tourism. The book is set in 1989 as Montana is about to celebrate its centenary, which it should be noted, reminds us just how young much of America is.

One of Doig's strengths as a novelist is his books are not constrained by a format. He can write sweeping epics, and tight little stories focused on a handful of people. English Creek, the first but middle book of the trilogy is focused on Jick McCaskill, a teenager whose family is about to be torn apart as his elder brother falls in love and abandons the plans his family have made for him. The first volume, Dancing at the Rascal Fair also dealt with romance, but set against a breathtaking story of homesteading and the founding of a farming community. In Ride With Me, however Doig abandons both these styles and opts for a road trip featuring the now elderly Jick.

Jick, the bright teenager of English Creek, is now older and more cynical. He has just lost his wife and is bereft. As Montana's centenary approaches his daughter, Mariah approaches him. A photo-journalist, she has been commissioned to do a series of pieces about the centenary, and about Montana, with the star journalist Riley Wright from the local paper. Riley, unfortunately happens to be Mariah's former husband, whose spectacular falling out during the divorce appears to have been the talk of small town Montana. He also rejected Jick's offer to take over the ranch, threatening that the small farm would be subsumed into the big agricultural conglomerates that have been a disliked feature throughout the history of the state and the trilogy.

All this is a convoluted setup to explain why Jick is driving a Winnebago around the backroads of Montana with his daughter and ex-Son in Law in the back. It means that Doig is able to write about the places and people of Montana with his customary love and sensibility. There's plenty of history of course - including some sentimental stuff for Jick, and plenty of other stuff about the decline and fall of various Montana staples - the mining industry of Butte. I was also glad that Doig's characters acknowledged the Native American history, visiting Chief Joseph's final battle site (though oddly there's only a passing mention of the Little Big Horn).

While all this is fun, and its particularly cute for anyone who has done a Montana road trip as you'll recognise places, roads and so on. It makes for a less engrossing story that the early books. It feels like a crude attempt to tie up loose ends from the earlier books. One scene has Jick going to a local library and finding letters from his grandparents back and forth to Scandinavia. These are all characters from Dancing at the Rascal Fair and it all felt contrived.

All in all this was a disappointed finale and not up to the standard of Doig's other works.