Winter Brothers

WINTER BROTHERS is a magnificent evocation of the Pacific Northwest. In it, Ivan Doig explores the unpublished diaries of James Gilchrist Swan, an early settler of the region, who came west from Boston in the 1850s. Doig followed Swan's footsteps one wild winter along the coastline of Puget Sound and up the Straits of Juan de Fuca. He traveled with Swan's diary, and in the book compares it with his own journal of the outing. What emerges from this interaction of two minds is a dialogue across time. It links our generation with the American frontier, and suggested the title to the author. "Doig's account of the season he spent peering over the shoulder of a man 11 decades older than himself...is a double portrait of striking clarity, yet with wonderfully subtle hues." (San Francisco Chronicle)