A compelling portrait of a 12 year old’s summer in 1960 Montana. His father is a bartender with quite a bit of history.
Many thanks to Penguin and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honedt opinion.

The Bartender’s Tale is the story of a father and son living in Two Medicine County, Mt, a familiar locale of Doig fans. It’s 1960 and twelve year old Rusty has recently come to live with his father, Tom Henry, the bartender of the title and the popular owner of the local saloon. Rusty spends a lot of time in the bar’s backroom listening through the air vent and learning the ways of his father and the town.

It took me a long time to warm up to this story despite its first person narration. I’ve read Ivan Doig’s The Whistling Season and Work Song and loved them both. Here, I had a difficult time feeling any connection to the characters and struggled to continue until almost the halfway point. I’m glad I stuck with it though, as it turned into a poignant coming of age story. Doig, as always, writes beautifully of Montana, as both that western state and Rusty face the changes in the world around them.