Last Bus to Wisdom

Ivan Doig

Aug 2015 · Recorded Books · Narrated by David Aaron Baker

About this audiobook

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.

About the author

Ivan Doig was born in White Sulphur Springs, Montana in 1939. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in history from University of Washington. Before becoming an author, he worked as a ranch hand and a journalist. His non-fiction works include This House of Sky, Winter Brothers, and Heart Earth. His fiction titles include English Creek, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, Bucking the Sun, The Whistling Season, The Bartender's Tale, and Last Bus to Wisdom. He received several awards including the Western Literature Association's Lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award and the Wallace Stegner Award in 2007. He died of multiple myeloma on April 8, 2015 at the age of 75.