The Eleventh Man

From Publishers Weekly In the solid latest from veteran novelist Doig ( The Whistling Season ), 11 starters of a close-knit Montana college championship football team enlist as the U.S. hits the thick of WWII and are capriciously flung around the globe in various branches of the service. Ben Reinking, initially slated for pilot training, is jerked from his plane and more or less forced to become a war correspondent for the semisecret Threshold Press War Project, a propaganda arm of the combined armed forces. His orders: to travel the world, visiting and writing profiles on each of his heroic teammates. The fetching Women's Airforce Service Pilot who flies him around, Cass Standish, is married to a soldier fighting in the South Pacific, which leads to anguish for them both (think Alan Ladd and Loretta Young). Meanwhile, Ben's former teammates are being killed one by one, often, it seems, being deliberately put into harm's way. Doig adroitly keeps Ben on track, offering an old-fashioned greatest generation story, well told. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Bookmarks Magazine Critics agree that Ivan Doig's old-fashioned storytelling tilts more toward sentimentality and occasional cliche here than in previous works. Doig, who normally writes smaller- ranging stories set in Montana and the American West, may have overextended himself in this novel. The structure that sends the protagonist in search of missing teammates all over the world results in fractured storytelling and characters who disappear too quickly to be developed. While most critics recognize Doig's strong capacity for lyrical, descriptive writing, the consensus is that he is better off focusing his laser on the intimate lives of the American West than he is developing a wider focus in setting and in scope.Copyright 2008 Bookmarks Publishing LLC From Booklist Doig constructs an elaborate premise for his latest venture into Montana history: the entire starting lineup of Treasure State University’s 1941 football team—undefeated and known as the “Supreme Team”—enlists in the armed services shortly after Pearl Harbor. One of those players, Ben Reinking, finds himself pulled from pilot training and given a peculiar assignment by a special branch of the military whose charge is, in effect, creating heroes for the war propaganda machine. Ben, a journalism major whose father runs a small-town paper in Gros Ventre, Montana, is ordered to follow in the footsteps of his 10 teammates throughout the war, reporting on their adventures, triumphs, and, inevitably, their deaths. His mission, which he comes to abhor as its ghoulish side becomes dominant, takes him from flight-training school in Great Falls, where he falls in love with a married female pilot, to the invasion of Guam, the jungles of New Guinea, and the Battle of the Bulge. As always, Doig writes with impressionistic flourish—his style can veer from powerful and poignant to overwrought in the space of a few paragraphs—and his storytelling remains rooted in the grand tradition of western literature, from A. B. Guthrie to William Kittredge: broad adventures grounded in a vivid landscape and featuring the clash between strong individualists and an environment that refuses to bend to the individual will. There is a “band of brothers” aspect to this mix of war story, love story, and western history that threatens to turn overly sentimental, but Doig steers away from trouble successfully. Entertaining reading from a deservedly popular chronicler of the American West. --Bill Ott ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE ELEVENTH MAN " The Eleventh Man is about loyalty and survival and sacrifice--and love--and remains intensely suspenseful and moving throughout."--Scott Turow PRAISE FOR THE WHISTLING SEASON "Doig is in the best sense an old-fashioned novelist: You feel as if you're in the hands of an absolute expert at story-making, a hard-hewn frontier version of Walter Scott or early Dickens."-- O, The Oprah Magazine "Courageous . . . charming . . . When a voice as pleasurable as [Doig's] evokes a lost era, somehow it doesn't seem so lost after all."-- The Washington Post Book World From the Inside Flap Driven by the memory of a fallen teammate, TSUx92s 1941 starting lineup went down as legend in Montana football history, charging through the season undefeated. Two years later, the "Supreme Team" is caught up in World War II. Ten of them are scattered around the globe in the warx92s lonely and dangerous theaters. The eleventh man, Ben Reinking, has been plucked from pilot training by a military propaganda machine hungry for heroes. He is to chronicle the adventures of his teammates, man by man, for publication in small-town newspapers across the country like the one his father edits. Ready for action, he chafes at the assignment, not knowing that it will bring him love from an unexpected quarter and test the law of averages, which holds that all but one of his teammates should come through the conflict unscathed.xa0A deeply American story, The Eleventh Man is Ivan Doigx92s most powerful novel to date. PRAISE FOR THE WHISTLING SEASON "Evocative . . . Doig offers a gentle appreciation of the secrets beneath the surface of everyday life, set against a Western landscape that is described in concrete detail."? The New Yorker "Both elegiac and life-affirming, The Whistling Season takes the chill out of today's literary winds."? Los Angeles Times Book Review "A deeply meditated and achieved art."? New York Times Book Review " The Whistling Season does what Doig does best: evoke the past and create a landscape and characters worth caring about . . . it's lovely storytelling."? USA Today "Doig is in the best sense an old-fashioned novelist: You feel as if you're in the hands of an absolute expert at story-making, a hard-hewn frontier version of Walter Scott or early Dickens."-- O, The Oprah Magazine "Courageous . . . charming . . . When a voice as pleasurable as [Doig's] evokes a lost era, somehow it doesn't seem so lost after all."-- The Washington Post Book World Ivan Doig was born in Montana in 1939 and grew up along the Rocky Mountain Front, the dramatic landscape that has inspired much of his writing. A recipient of a lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western Literature Association, he is the author of eight previous novels, most recently The Whistling Season, and three works of nonfiction, including This House of Sky . He lives in Seattle. From The Washington Post From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Molly Gloss The 11 men alluded to in the title of Ivan Doig's new novel compose the starting football team for fictional Treasure State (Montana) University in its much-heralded undefeated 1941 season. Now, in 1943, 10 of those men are scattered in far-flung theaters of a world war, and the 11th, Ben Reinking, is writing up his teammates' exploits for a military propaganda machine called the Threshold Press War Project -- TPWP, sardonically known as Tepee Weepy. The story occasionally jumps back to earlier events in Ben's life and to the 1941 football season, in particular a pivotal week before the opening game when the sudden death of a teammate was the catalyst for the so-called "season of the Twelfth Man." But the bulk of the novel follows Reinking as he chronicles his teammates' war experiences -- and, when necessary, their deaths -- for publication in newspapers around the country. It's a shapely premise for a novel, allowing Doig a broad canvas on which to paint the breadth and scope of World War II: Carl is bogged down in the forests of New Guinea; Jake pilots Lend-Lease planes from East Base, Mont., north to Russia; "Animal," on a Marine troop ship, hopscotchs from one island beachhead to the next; Sig, in the Coast Guard, patrols the Puget Sound shore; Moxie bosses an anti-aircraft gun pit in Antwerp; Nick serves on a destroyer in the Pacific; and Dexter is confined to a conscientious objector camp in the north Montana woods. Add to these a squadron of Women Air Force Service Pilots -- WASPs -- assigned to East Base, ferrying military aircraft north to Canada, and nearly every military operation is in play. Scenes range from the jungles of Guam to the Butte du Lion of Waterloo, but the story returns again and again to East Base, Mont., where Doig, not surprisingly, is at his most lyrical, evoking the landscape of Ben Reinking's (and Doig's own) childhood. "Wheatfields winter-sown and fallow stretched below like checkered linoleum laid to the wall of the Rockies. There to the west he could pick out the long straight brink of Roman Reef and its dusky cliff, and the snake line of watercourse that would be English Creek. Gros Ventre, though, held itself out of sight beneath its cover of trees." English Creek and the town of Gros Ventre are familiar place names in Montana's Two Medicine country that Doig first imagined for his trilogy about the McCaskill family, novels that are still perhaps his best-known works: English Creek , Dancing at the Rascal Fair and Ride with Me, Mariah Montana . The Eleventh Man is more wide-ranging and plot-heavy than those earlier works. Statistical probability means nine of the 10 on the "Supreme Team" should survive, but those odds are neither a guarantee nor a consolation; as the novel opens, two of the team are already in their graves, and another has lost a leg, fighting in Sicily. Soon, Ben Reinking is writing a third obituary, and then a fourth. As one by one the men perish, the novel takes on a growing sense of doom and inevitability. Ben, on temporary assignment at East Base, falls for the WASP commanding officer, Cass Standish, and their love affair casts its own dark shadow: Cass is a married woman with a husband serving in Guam. Mysteries underlie both the season of The Twelfth Man and the fateful roll call of deaths reported in Ben's Tepee Weepy dispatches. There are lengthy scenes of battle: the invasion of Guam, the battle of Leyte Gulf, the bombardment of Antwerp, all described in historical detail. Yet this is not a novel with a strong sense of suspense or dramatic complication. Most of the deaths befalling the "Supreme Team" happen off stage, relayed to Ben and to us after the fact; and we're almost halfway into the book before something occurs that puts Ben himself in peril. For a war novel taking place on such a wide, dangerous field, the book is remarkably quiet. Doig is known for his rich imagining of local American history and the nuances of human relationships, and this is a book that deliberately keeps its attention on the places where war intersects with those less dramatic themes. He is also sometimes called old-fashioned, which can be either criticism or approbation, depending on your point of view; and granted, it's sometimes hard to distinguish nostalgia from careful, thoughtful avoidance of cynicism. There are a few cringe-inducing moments in The Eleventh Man , especially in the romance between Ben and Cass. "She flicked him the urgent smile that showed the irresistible tiny gap between her front teeth, and he melted like a schoolboy and knew it. Deeply and rigorously they kissed again, running their hands silkily here and there, as if keeping track of everything in the book of hotel-room romance." But The Eleventh Man vividly evokes a prior time and way of being. It takes a serious view of war and the practitioners of war, and looks hard at the meaning of heroism. And not incidentally, it contains enough loose threads to hint at a sequel, which will be good news to Doig's many loyal readers. Copyright 2008, The Washington Post . All Rights Reserved. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1 NEVER MUCH OF a town for showing off, Gros Ventre waited around one last bend in the road, suppertime lights coming on here and there beneath its roof of trees. As the bus headed up the quiet main street toward the hotel, where the lobby served as depot, Ben Reinking saw the single lighted storefront on the block with the bank and the beauty shop. Of course. Thursday night. His father putting the newspaper to bed after this week’s press run. "Here will do," he called to the driver. The bus driver jammed on the brakes and heaved himself around to take a better look at this final passenger. Using all the breath he could summon, the man let out slowly: "I’ll be goddamned. You’re him. Awful sorry, Lieutenant, I didn’t—" "I’ll live." Most civilians could not read the obscure shoulder patch on his flight jacket, and any camouflage he could get anytime suited Ben. Right there in the middle of the street, the driver laboriously dragged out the duffel bag from the luggage bay and presented it to him. The man looked tempted to salute. Ben murmured his thanks and turned away toward the premises of the Gros Ventre Weekly Gleaner. Well, he told himself as he swung along under the burden of his duffel, now to see whether his father had picked up any news about the repeal of the law of averages, as it apparently had been. Habit dies hard, even the military variety that never came natural to him; he caught himself surveying these most familiar surroundings in terms of ambush and booby trap, and with a shake of his head sought to change over to observation of a more civil sort. Storefront by dozing storefront, the town still looked as if the world of war had nothing to do with it, yet he knew better. It was simply that buildings don’t read casualty lists. He tried to put that thought away and just come to terms with being home. Gros Ventre, he’d learned growing up here, was the same age as the tree rings in the mature cottonwood colonnade along its streets, and altered itself as slowly. Only the season had changed appreciably since the last time he had to do this, early evening unrolling a frosty carpet of light from the front of the Gleaner building now as he approached. He stopped to read the window as he always did. Posted beneath the gilt lettering on the plate glass were handbills announcing a war bonds box supper and a farm machinery auction on lower English Creek. Both were set in the familiar exclamatory typeface his father called Visual Braille. Fooling around as a printer paid for the indulgence of being a small-town editor, Bill Reinking liked to say. Just this moment, Ben spotted him there at the back of the office in the job shop, running the addressograph himself. As ever, his father looked like a schoolmaster out of place, peering foggily through his bifocals while he fed the dog tag–sized subscription plates into the small machine for it to stamp those names and addresses onto the out-of-town mail wrappers. Ben remembered now: the office help, Janie, had moved to Arizona, where her husband’s tank corps was in training. Past his own reflection in the glass of the door, Ben watched his father at his lonesome chore until it started to hurt. This part doesn’t get any easier either, does it. Two bylines under one roof. At least we both write with the pointed end, he taught me that. With that he stepped inside to the subtle smell of ink fresh on newsprint, calling out as cheerfully as he could manage: "All the news that fits, again this week?" "Ben!" The addressograph made empty thumping sounds onto wrappers until his father could shut it down. "Surprise the living daylights out of a man, why don’t you. We weren’t expecting you until the weekend." "Well, guess what, the Air Transport Command turns out to be full of surprises. It’s only a forty-eight-hour leave, not the seventy-two I put in for." He tried to cover the next with a shrug. "And there’s something I have to do out of town tomorrow. Other than that, I’m the perfect guest." "Better enjoy you in a hurry, hadn’t I," his father said in his dry way as they shook hands. His face alight, the older man gazed at the younger as if storing up on him. He was dying to ask what was behind this trip home, Ben could tell, but doing his best to be a father first and a newspaperman second. That was fortunate, because Ben himself did not have the right words anywhere near ready. In the strange labyrinth of TDYs—temporary duty assignments—that Ben Reinking’s war somehow had turned into, this one was the hardest yet to talk about. Bill Reinking could see most of this. Not wanting to prompt, he ventured only: "You’ve seen a lot of the world lately." More than enough. England, bombed stiff by the Luftwaffe. New Guinea, beachheads backed against Japanese-held mountains two miles high. The close call from ack-ack over Palau on the B-17 ride; the even closer one no one was being told about. Not exactly pleasant conversation, any of it. Ben got rid of it for now in mock-heroic fashion: "It was hell out in those there islands." His father laughed uncertainly. After a moment, the bifocals tilted up in appraisal. "Nice addition to your uniform, by the way. The Ernies"—Pyle and Hemingway preeminently, but newsman slang for war correspondents as a species—"don’t have that." "This?" Self-consciously Ben rubbed the new silver bar of a full lieutenant on the tab of his shirt collar. Another hole in the law of averages. The promotion had caught him by surprise almost as much as the blindside orders that landed him back at East Base yet again. He lacked the time in grade, base commanders were never glad to see him coming, and for its own murky reasons the Threshold Press War Project did not bother with fitness reports—So why boost me from shavetail all of a sudden? What do the bastards have in mind for me next? For his father’s sake, he forced a grin. "It doesn’t amount to that much, Dad, to outrank civilians." All during this each looked the other over to see how he was holding up since last time. Bill Reinking was bald to the back of his head, but his ginger mustache still matched the color of Ben’s hair. His strong glasses schooled a square-cut face on a chunky man into the most eager kind of lookout—the newsdigger’s close curiosity that he had passed on to his son. That and the ginger follicles and not much else. Ben had the Hollywood lineaments of his mother’s people—the bodily poise, the expressive hands. Those and that unbuyable mark of character: a deeply longitudinal face, neighbored with latitudes of experience—a surprising amount for a twenty-three-year-old—evident in the steady sea-blue of the gaze. The difference in stature between the two men was long-standing. Tall enough that he just skimmed under the Army Air Corps height limit, Ben had an altitude advantage over his father in a number of ways, although he usually tried not to press it. Even so, the college education, the football fame, the TPWP correspondent patch, the bylines and datelines from his stopovers in the world’s many combat zones, those all came home with him every time, and both men stood back from it a bit. "How was the trip up here?" Bill Reinking asked, to be asking something. "Like Gone with the Wind without somebody to neck with," his son said and laughed in a way he did not recognize. "Long." Wondering how many more times this could happen in one lifetime, early that afternoon he had stepped out into the familiar blowy weather of Great Falls and pointed himself toward the same old tired bus that again and again had taken him to college and from college, to the war and from the war. This time around, a person could tell there was a war on from the melancholy wheeze of the bus driver. On easier journeys home, he had been accustomed to forking over his fare to this narrow-shouldered fatherly man—an asthma sufferer, from the sound of it—in the drowsy waiting room of the Rocky Mountain Stageline depot. Now there was a sallow woman in that job who issued "God bless you real good, sonny," along with the ticket, and the ex–ticket agent was puffing around out in the loading area, dragging mail bags and the civilians’ suitcases toward the belly of the bus. The war effort, preached on posters everywhere you turned these past two years since Pearl Harbor: it wore on people, without doubt, although that did not seem what the sloganeers intended to convey. Ben tried to slip his duffel into the bus and the seat next to him so he could lean against it and possibly nap during the familiar trip, but the hunched driver grabbed it away and insisted on stowing it for him. "Save your strength for the enemy, Lieutenant," he panted. Which one? Keeping that to himself at all costs, Ben boarded. He never liked being last at anything, but the half dozen other passengers, farm people with their city shopping clutched in their laps, long since had claimed specific seats and were giving him the gauging looks that young men in fleece-lined flight jackets tended to draw. If they only knew. Swiftly nodding in everyone’s general direction the way he imagined someone who looked like a hotshot pilot was counted on to do, he deposited himself nearest the door as always, the coat leather crackling as he folded his considerable height into the worn confines of the seat. In his travels through the world of war, he had learned never to shed the fleece jacket on any means of transport, whether it was plane, train, ship, jeep, or bus, until he had proof the heater worked. In this case it did not, at least to any noticeable degree, and by the time the bus lumbered away from the depot and rumbled west onto the bridge across the Missouri, he had turned up the coat collar for the full effect of the wool. In more ways than one, he had never really warmed to Great Fall... Read more