Work Song Overview
An award-winning and beloved novelist of the American West spins the further adventures of a favorite character, in one of his richest historical settings yet.
“If America was a melting pot, Butte would be its boiling point,” observes Morrie Morgan, the itinerant teacher, walking encyclopedia, and inveterate charmer last seen leaving a one-room schoolhouse in Marias Coulee, the stage he stole in Ivan Doig’s 2006 The Whistling Season. A decade later, Morrie is back in Montana, as the beguiling narrator of Work Song.
Lured like so many others by “the richest hill on earth,” Morrie steps off the train in Butte, copper-mining capital of the world, in its jittery heyday of 1919. But while riches elude Morrie, once again a colorful cast of local characters-and their dramas-seek him out: a look-alike, sound-alike pair of retired Welsh miners; a streak-of-lightning waif so skinny that he is dubbed Russian Famine; a pair of mining company goons; a comely landlady propitiously named Grace; and an eccentric boss at the public library, his whispered nickname a source of inexplicable terror. When Morrie crosses paths with a lively former student, now engaged to a fiery young union leader, he is caught up in the mounting clash between the iron-fisted mining company, radical “outside agitators,” and the beleaguered miners. And as tensions above ground and below reach the explosion point, Morrie finds a unique way to give a voice to those who truly need one.
“The most tumultous, quirky, and fascinating city in the American West of the last century has finally found a storyteller equal to its stories. … Ivan Doig brings to life the core of humanity, and a hell of cast, amidst the shadows and sorrows of Butte, Montana — a city that could say it never slept well before New York made a similar claim.”-Tim Egan, author of The Last Hard Time and The Big Burn
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As a Montanan I admit that I am partial to Ivan Doig. My first exposure was “This House of Sky”, truly an exceptional memoir and one that lovingly captures a complicated Montana childhood. The love affair continued with “English Creek”, “Dancing at the Rascal Fair” and “Bucking the Sky”, all three linked with the story of one family. Then came a few I could have probably skipped. But with his “The Whistling Season” I knew he was back in form. This new novel, “Work Song” is linked as well, and Morrie Morris, a memorable character from “The Whistling Season” now takes center stage.
On the run from a checkered past in Chicago, and an ill-fated romance on the Montana hi-line, Morrie shows up in Butte, Montana in 1919, in the midst of labor turmoil. He fortunately finds lodging in a boarding house run by the widowed Grace Faraday and a job at the Butte Public Library. The labor unions are chafing under the brass-knuckled tactics of the Anaconda Company goons. Doig skillfully sets the scene as the miners, mostly immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Cornwall, Russia and Sweden struggle to find a way to stand up for their rights as one union with one voice. Morrie crosses paths with a former student from the hi-line and her beau, a union organizer and a humorous and entertaining plot is set into motion. Morrie agrees to help the multi-ethnic union members choose a “work song”, a unifying theme song that will demonstrate their solidarity and further their cause.
Doig has a unique writing style that captures the lively spirit of the times and the complexity of the characters strutting on Butte’s colorful stage. “Work Song” is a quick-paced novel that brought great pleasure to this lover of Montana’s talented writers. But it will be a treat to all non-Montanans (but Montana lovers) as well.
Technical Details
- ISBN13: 9781594487620
- Condition: New
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