A review by vkemp
The Bartender's Tale by Ivan Doig

3.0

Rusty was "an accident between the sheets" who lives with his aunt until he is six and his father swoops down from Montana to take him off to live over his saloon in Gros Ventre called "The Medicine Lodge." In 1960, Rusty's life changes dramatically. Proxy, a taxi dancer, Rusty's dad knew long ago, and her daughter Francine arrive at the Medicine Lodge. Rusty struggles to decipher the adults around him and comes to terms with the oddities of adult behavior. The pace of the book is slow and deliberate and the reader watches as Rusty's world becomes bigger and more complex than he ever thought it could be.