This House of Sky: Dupuyer

Dupuyer, unlike Ringling or White Sulphur Springs, seemed never to have had the least hesitation about its livelihood since the first wagon master wearily overnighted on the site sometime in the 1870’s…. The country rimming it to the west was found to be fine for sheep, and a local rancher named Oliver Goldsmith Cooper became president of the potent Montana Wool Growers Association. Before the turn of the century, a quarter million pounds of fleece were being shipped from the Dupuyer Creek ranches each year. (186-187)

Doig, Ivan. This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.

About the Book

This House of Sky

Published in 1978, This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind is a memoir of Doig’s hardscrabble childhood on ranches and in small towns along the Rocky Mountain Front. A finalist for the National Book Award, This House of Sky and Doig’s other works earned him a lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western Literature Association in 1989.

For more about This House of Sky—background notes, a study guide and photos of Doig’s parents, Berneta and Charlie, and his grandmother, Bessie Ringer—visit ivandoig.com.

While the settings in This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind clearly reference actual locales, it is understood that the book—including its places—is ultimately the product of the author’s imagination. The intent of this literary map is to enrich the reading experience by interpreting those places, not to render them literally or definitively.

About the Author

Ivan Doig

Ivan Doig was born in White Sulphur Springs, in Montana’s Smith River Valley, to a family of homesteaders and ranch workers. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Washington, and has authored more than a dozen novels and works of non-fiction.

Doig has written, “I don’t think of myself as a ‘Western’ writer. To me, language—the substance on the page, that poetry under the prose—is the ultimate ‘region,’ the true home, for a writer.”