Crow Fair: Stories

Crow Fair (2015) is a short story collection by American author Thomas McGuane. Its 17 stories, set almost entirely in McGuane’s native Montana, explore family dysfunction and its lifelong consequences. Paternal failures and adultery recur repeatedly, as do moments of sublime encounter with the natural world. Critics hailed the collection as a “slyly cutting batch of tales from a contemporary master” (Kirkus Reviews).

The collection’s opening story, “Weight Watcher,” introduces most of the themes and situations which the collection explores. It opens as the narrator’s father arrives on his doorstep. Kicked out by the narrator’s mother, he won’t be allowed home until he gets his weight below 250 pounds.

His father is an embarrassment to the narrator, and McGuane puts the pair in a series of excruciating situations. We learn that before he gained weight, the narrator’s father was a ladies’ man and a serial adulterer, a platoon leader in Vietnam who keeps photos in his wallet of some of the people he killed. He is also deeply fragile. Before bed, he listens to recorded self-help messages.



His son remembers recognizing, as a child, that his father is utterly dependent on his mother, also a tyrant in her own way. As the story ends, the narrator reflects on the lifelong damage he has suffered at his parents’ hands: “I’ve always enjoyed the idea of nonexistence.” Just as his father is waiting to be allowed home, he is waiting for his parents to die so his life can begin.

In “Hubcaps,” McGuane explores similar territory through the eyes of a young boy. The protagonist’s alcoholic parents gradually turn his innocent obsession with baseball into the less-innocent hobby of stealing hubcaps.

When the collection turns to married life, its protagonists continue to be marked by childhood trauma. Several stories take adultery as their central theme. In “Lake Story,” a man who is having a long-term affair with a married woman takes her on an outing, without making proper arrangements to make sure they aren’t spotted by people they know. Their affair is unmasked, and as it is, they realize they never had much keeping them together anyway. In “On a Dirt Road,” a wife goes out to meet friends for pizza. When her husband decides to join them at the last minute, he learns that his wife is, in fact, meeting a lover. “An Old Man Who Liked to Fish” takes place after the disappearance of the titular old man. His wife—who suffers dementia—believes he has run off with “Francine.” When she learns that he is dead, she says, “Well, I hope she’s happy now.” In the title story, set at the Native American Crow Fair pow-wow, two brothers learn that their dying mother had an affair.



“The Casserole” is narrated by a husband who drives his wife to her parents’ ranch, only to be sent home with a lunch-pail of casserole, now wife-less. In “Shaman,” the police shooting of a homeless man collapses the marriage of a couple who looked out for him.

Other stories concern fathers’ failed attempts to connect with sons and vice versa. “A Long View to the West” follows a dying Native American rancher as he tries one last time to interest his son Clay—a car salesman—in the old family stories. In “Canyon Ferry,” a divorced father tries to impress his son with a dangerous ice-fishing expedition, with near-fatal results. Rancher Szabo, in “The Good Samaritan,” hires a mysterious ranch-hand to replace his son, in prison on drugs charges.

The alcoholic narrator of “Grandma and Me” is struggling not with his father but with his blind grandmother. While they picnic by the river, he spots a corpse floating by, and abandons her to follow it.



Some of McGuane’s families are even more intricately dysfunctional. In “The House of Sand Creek,” a real estate attorney moves into a repossessed home with his new wife, their adopted son, and Bob the babysitter. After tension grows between the three adults, Bob kidnaps the child. When he is found, the child’s adoptive parents decide they don’t want him after all and let Bob keep him.

Other stories follow protagonists who are out on their own, although still demon driven. In “Stars,” astronomer Jessica has a frightening encounter in the woods with a man who has trapped a wolf and intends to kill it. The incident disturbs her fragile balance, and her slide culminates in a road-rage incident and a confrontation with the police. “River Camp” takes two brothers-in-law and tour guide out into the wilderness, where all three lose their nerve, and some home truths about the in-laws’ marriages come out.

“Motherlode” follows Dave, a talented cattle inseminator. He encounters charismatic crook Ray and his lover, Morsel, who manipulate him into abandoning his gifts in favor of a new life as a drug dealer.



Just one of McGuane’s characters is driven to something like success. “Prairie Girl” follows teenager Mary Elizabeth, who begins her working life at a brothel called the “Butt Hut” and ends up as president of the town bank, via a marriage of convenience with the closeted son of a local luminary. The story ends as she sees her son off to college.