5. What does Angus’s love of verse, and his habit of quoting it, say about his personality? What does he seek by turning to poetry and song? What effect does Doig achieve by peppering the book with Scottish verse? What special significance lies in the lyrics of “Dancing at the Rascal Fair,” which the author composed to serve as the book’s title?
6. Doig believes that “writers of caliber can ground their work in specific land and lingo and yet be writing of that larger country: life.” Yet, setting is anything but a passive backdrop in Doig’s fiction. How does the grandeur of Montana dwarf the lives of the characters or make them seem more expansive and dramatic? How does the unpredictable Montana climate parallel the stormy relationships depicted in the book?
7. Angus remarks that “the Atlantic was a child’s teacup compared to the ocean that life could be.” Discuss the water imagery throughout the book, from Rob and Angus’s transatlantic voyage to the droughts the homesteaders suffer to Rob’s eventual fate.
8. Throughout the book, Rob and Angus worry over the “perils that sheep invite on themselves.” Describe the parallel between the sheep, with all their promis