The Eleventh Man

A relatively brief book by contemporary standards, "The Eleventh Man" is muscular, yet trim and solid as a Montana ranch-hand; as thoughtful and wise as an old newspaper editor. A skilled craftsman, writer Ivan Doig has used minimal space to create dozens of memorable characters and to weave more than a dozen individual stories into a novel that was even better with a second reading. Not one to theorize nor to waste time on gratuitous action, Doig writes about the real world and its unexpected adventures. Many of his earlier works have dealt with pioneer lives and hardships, as the western territories were settled by dedicated, risk-taking seekers of new lives. They have dealt with brutal forces of nature. "The Eleventh Man" deals with many of those forces, as they took place in the 1940's, pressurized and traumatized by World War II, adding the thoughtless violence of war as it affects individuals and their highly believable lives. He puts names and faces on heroic characters, who suffer unheroic deaths in a cause that has been often been distorted and idealized. And he recognizes the many unkind and petty things that people do. With his hero, former Montana football player Ben Reinking, his heroine, wise and lively aviator Cass Standish, Doig lovingly expresses his fascination with people and with human situations. Throughout, he expresses his love love of nature and its enormity. How wonderful to find a writer who sees and hears the fundamental things that enrich our lives, and who expresses them so well.

When I go to the library, I look for Ivan Diog books because I know that it will be a most enjoyable read!

As he ALMOST always does, Doig blends history and a darn good, personal yarn into a great human story. Well done.

Ivan Doig has written a book that takes place during World War II, but this book is not ABOUT the war. Instead, he has written a touching, sometimes wrenching chronicle of one man's quest to 'beat the odds'. Although this novel takes place over two years during a terrible time in history, it is not a historical account of the war. It is the story of one man's search for his purpose in life, always viewed through the lens of what might happen to that life if the odds don't go his way. I loved this book, and did not want to turn the last page. Every one of Mr. Doig's books has deeply touched my heart, and this one is no different. If you know Mr. Doig's works, you know what I mean.

The Eleventh Man is Ivan Doig's fictional meditation on the perplexing question of why a given group of farflung American active combatants might suffer far higher mortality than the national average. Ben Reinking was one of the 1941 "Supreme Team" of Montana's Treasure State University (based loosely on real Montan college players). The former teammates all served their country after Pearl Harbor, believing most of their number would return home and continue on with their lives. What if, however, this group hung out on the edge of the probability bell curve where "bitter arithmetic" held sway, where the law of averages was out of whack? The novel simultaneously explores unsung battle theaters and underpublicized war arrangements. TPWP (a Doig fictional stand-in for the actual Office of War Information's news arms) intended to use the Supreme Team as a public "morale" tool, and it commandeered Ben away from his pilot's training to become a war correspondent and write about his former teammates. Since the men were stationed in various combat zones around the globe, Ben traveled far and wide to interview them. But they didn't take part in the hallmarks of the war we now recall most such as D-Day in Europe. Jake Eisman, for example, flew Lend Lease B-17 Flying Fortress bombers to Alaska where the planes were turned over to Soviet pilots. In one of his most engrossing adventures, Ben hitched a ride in the Plexiglas nose cone of a bomber Jake delivered. Ben also traveled to the Olympic Peninsula near La Push, Washington to patrol isolated headlands with Sigmund Prokosch of the U.S. Coastguard. Sig kept watch for Japanese submarines at sea, the chance of some offloads onto land from those subs, and balloon bombs that could set the vast forests ablaze. Sig was engaged. She was called Ruby, and when Sig said her name, Ben thought "the word glowed as if it were her namesake gem. Love and the salt taste of absence, old as Odysseus...." Sig wasn't the only one in love. At East Base, a squadron of women pilots test flew various planes for the Air Transport Command (yes, this female squadron was based on real history too). In the book, Captain Cass Standish was their leader. She was also Ben's lover. Her husband, a Montaneer, had been off fighting Japs in the Pacific jungles while she, a WASP, served in this unusual female duty stateside. What would they all do if and when the Montaneer returned? Meanwhile more of Ben's gridiron buddies were dying, sometimes within almost arm's reach, more often far away. The reader becomes increasingly anxious that all members of the Supreme Team might perish. Will they? Who will survive? Will there be any reason for who dies and who doesn't? The Eleventh Man is a work that requires attention. It doesn't have an straightforward structure, especially at the beginning. It jumps fitfully in time and place, sometimes depriving the reader of background. For instance, one has to largely accept the proposition that the Su