Richard S. Wheeler's Blog, page 23
September 9, 2012
A Fresh Start
I've wondered for a long time what might be done to restore western fiction to the splendid estate it once enjoyed. When I first started writing western stories in the seventies, numerous mass-market publishers were producing all sorts of good novels, abetted by library lines and occasional hardcover publication. People loved western stories and bought them by the millions.
That's gone now, and not likely to return. I don't think this decline is cyclical this time. I think modernity and urban life have overwhelmed stories of horse travel and rural survival. But if there is to be any sort of revival of the traditional western story, it would likely be the work of a single charismatic western author, who reopens the field with a new approach and a unique voice. Until then, things will probably stay pretty much the same. A small cadre of writers, some of them genuinely gifted, will continue to produce the sort of derivative stuff we're seeing on the racks, and that will continue indefinitely as a sort of niche market.
I'm in the twilight of my writing life and unlikely to see any change, but maybe some happy day some bright and skilled novelist will give the world a new and better sort of western story, and the publishers will gladly get on the bandwagon. The fiction of the real west, as opposed to the mythic one, is healthier, and likely to continue in both hardcover and trade paperback publication.
That's gone now, and not likely to return. I don't think this decline is cyclical this time. I think modernity and urban life have overwhelmed stories of horse travel and rural survival. But if there is to be any sort of revival of the traditional western story, it would likely be the work of a single charismatic western author, who reopens the field with a new approach and a unique voice. Until then, things will probably stay pretty much the same. A small cadre of writers, some of them genuinely gifted, will continue to produce the sort of derivative stuff we're seeing on the racks, and that will continue indefinitely as a sort of niche market.
I'm in the twilight of my writing life and unlikely to see any change, but maybe some happy day some bright and skilled novelist will give the world a new and better sort of western story, and the publishers will gladly get on the bandwagon. The fiction of the real west, as opposed to the mythic one, is healthier, and likely to continue in both hardcover and trade paperback publication.
September 7, 2012
The Two Western Worlds
In recent years, western fiction seems to have sheared into two pieces. One is the fiction of the real West, and the other the fiction of a mythic West. Stories of the real West are largely published by hardcover presses, and rarely end up as mass-market paperbacks. Stories of a ritualized blood-soaked West appear as original mass market paperbacks, and only rarely as hardcover books.
The stories set in a real West are often alive and vibrant and catch the heart. The stories of the mythic West are lost is a sea of sameness and mediocrity. Authors such as Willard Wyman have brilliantly brought the West and its unique people to life in hardcover publication. His first novel, High Country, won two Spur awards, and his second, Blue Heaven, is equally memorable and enticing. A slew of other novelists have set out to tell stories set in a western milieu that are compelling and honest and captivating.
But over in the world of original mass-market stories, there is little to celebrate. The stories are pedestrian at best, and each so like the previous hundreds that one can hardly tell them apart. One of the telltale clues about the mass-market field is that no author stamps his stories. Over in the world of mystery and crime fiction, Elmore Leonard's novels are recognizable from the first page. He has a way of telling a story that is all his own, and a delight to read. But no author of original mass-market western stories these days writes in his own fashion. A few decades ago, Louis L'Amour wrote romanticized stories that were swiftly identifiable; different from other authors' stories. So did Will Henry.
I remember back in the 80s, listening to veteran western novelists talk about ways to make each story original; ways to create fresh plots and unique characters and startling circumstances. I don't hear that any more.
The stories set in a real West are often alive and vibrant and catch the heart. The stories of the mythic West are lost is a sea of sameness and mediocrity. Authors such as Willard Wyman have brilliantly brought the West and its unique people to life in hardcover publication. His first novel, High Country, won two Spur awards, and his second, Blue Heaven, is equally memorable and enticing. A slew of other novelists have set out to tell stories set in a western milieu that are compelling and honest and captivating.
But over in the world of original mass-market stories, there is little to celebrate. The stories are pedestrian at best, and each so like the previous hundreds that one can hardly tell them apart. One of the telltale clues about the mass-market field is that no author stamps his stories. Over in the world of mystery and crime fiction, Elmore Leonard's novels are recognizable from the first page. He has a way of telling a story that is all his own, and a delight to read. But no author of original mass-market western stories these days writes in his own fashion. A few decades ago, Louis L'Amour wrote romanticized stories that were swiftly identifiable; different from other authors' stories. So did Will Henry.
I remember back in the 80s, listening to veteran western novelists talk about ways to make each story original; ways to create fresh plots and unique characters and startling circumstances. I don't hear that any more.
September 6, 2012
Ebbtide
New western titles on the mass-market racks seem to have reached a low ebb, in terms of variety, depth, and attractiveness. Virtually the only themes available are lawman and gunman stories, nearly all set in the extended South. You would be hard put to find a new title dealing with anything else.
You are unlikely to find a story about the Oregon Trail migration, or wagon trains in general. Unlikely to find any novel about the northern Indian wars. When did you last read a story set in the Dakotas? You will not find a novel in which a sheepherder is the protagonist. Neither will you find a novel in which a farmer, or nester, is the protagonist (as in Shane). You are unlikely to find mining town stories, or railroad stories. You are even less likely to find a story about the mining of ordinary non-precious minerals like copper or iron or coal. You will not find stories about commerce. Neither will you be likely to find a story about frontier doctors or lawyers or accountants or others who have specialized training. Neither will you find novels about western explorers, or geologists, or early paleontologists looking for bones. Neither will you find stories about the extermination of buffalo, or the establishment of Utopian or religious colonies, such as the Mormons. You are unlikely to find a story about the diseases, such as cholera, that swept the west.
Apart from the themes involving the physical West, you will find an absence of cultural and social and personal themes. You do not find stories about people heading west to cure their depression, or to heal their lungs or to reach manhood. You find no stories about people going mad from loneliness in the west; of desperate women dragged west by their husbands and plunged into a life of misery. You find no novels about missionaries or reformers or political experimenters, or visionaries. You find nothing about people bent on educating the citizens of rude mining towns. Where are stories about medicine man troupes, variety shows, carnivals, circuses, Chautauqua lecturers, socialists, anarchists, free love advocates? You rarely find a story with Hispanic or black or Basque heroes.
Get the picture? The real West brimmed and bristled with these vibrant elements. But the new titles on the racks are the narrowest I have experienced since I entered the field in the mid-seventies. And they are less inspired than at any time in my experience, both as an early reader of western fiction, and as a writer.
You are unlikely to find a story about the Oregon Trail migration, or wagon trains in general. Unlikely to find any novel about the northern Indian wars. When did you last read a story set in the Dakotas? You will not find a novel in which a sheepherder is the protagonist. Neither will you find a novel in which a farmer, or nester, is the protagonist (as in Shane). You are unlikely to find mining town stories, or railroad stories. You are even less likely to find a story about the mining of ordinary non-precious minerals like copper or iron or coal. You will not find stories about commerce. Neither will you be likely to find a story about frontier doctors or lawyers or accountants or others who have specialized training. Neither will you find novels about western explorers, or geologists, or early paleontologists looking for bones. Neither will you find stories about the extermination of buffalo, or the establishment of Utopian or religious colonies, such as the Mormons. You are unlikely to find a story about the diseases, such as cholera, that swept the west.
Apart from the themes involving the physical West, you will find an absence of cultural and social and personal themes. You do not find stories about people heading west to cure their depression, or to heal their lungs or to reach manhood. You find no stories about people going mad from loneliness in the west; of desperate women dragged west by their husbands and plunged into a life of misery. You find no novels about missionaries or reformers or political experimenters, or visionaries. You find nothing about people bent on educating the citizens of rude mining towns. Where are stories about medicine man troupes, variety shows, carnivals, circuses, Chautauqua lecturers, socialists, anarchists, free love advocates? You rarely find a story with Hispanic or black or Basque heroes.
Get the picture? The real West brimmed and bristled with these vibrant elements. But the new titles on the racks are the narrowest I have experienced since I entered the field in the mid-seventies. And they are less inspired than at any time in my experience, both as an early reader of western fiction, and as a writer.
September 5, 2012
New Story
I've self-published a novel that floated around New York for most of a year, with no takers. It's called Easy Street, and is available in trade paper and electronic versions.
Easy Street is a western that harkens back to a classical theme, but one now virtually forgotten. A youth is sent west by his father to make a man of him. In this case, the youth is a rich-man's son, Jay Warren, newly graduated from Harvard in 1876. His father, Tecumseh Warren, is a self-made shipping magnate who doesn't want his privileged son to spend a life in idleness. So Jay discovers that his graduation gift is a ticket to Cheyenne, in Wyoming Territory, and enough cash to sustain him while he finds employment.
Jay, filled with a sense of entitlement, is appalled, but heads west thinking it will all swiftly end. But his father means it: the young man is on his own, and must start making his own way. Jay is soon looking for a way to make a swift killing, a way to Easy Street, and that's how he gets into deeper and deeper trouble. He gets into the wrong crowd, and soon is in grave danger, a life-threatening crisis. Will he become a worthwhile person, or will he ruin himself in the West?
There is scarcely a weapon shot in this novel, although there is the threat of gunshot and the threat of the noose. There is no lack of drama. Jay gets into big trouble and then even worse trouble. But part of my purpose in writing this story is to show that gunfights and bloodbaths are not necessary in a western novel, and in fact can be rather dull and sterile compared to the many other ways to spin a novel of the American West. New York publishers, wedded to their current diet of high body counts and constant violence, didn't buy this one. Maybe that is their loss, or the public's loss.
Easy Street is a western that harkens back to a classical theme, but one now virtually forgotten. A youth is sent west by his father to make a man of him. In this case, the youth is a rich-man's son, Jay Warren, newly graduated from Harvard in 1876. His father, Tecumseh Warren, is a self-made shipping magnate who doesn't want his privileged son to spend a life in idleness. So Jay discovers that his graduation gift is a ticket to Cheyenne, in Wyoming Territory, and enough cash to sustain him while he finds employment.
Jay, filled with a sense of entitlement, is appalled, but heads west thinking it will all swiftly end. But his father means it: the young man is on his own, and must start making his own way. Jay is soon looking for a way to make a swift killing, a way to Easy Street, and that's how he gets into deeper and deeper trouble. He gets into the wrong crowd, and soon is in grave danger, a life-threatening crisis. Will he become a worthwhile person, or will he ruin himself in the West?
There is scarcely a weapon shot in this novel, although there is the threat of gunshot and the threat of the noose. There is no lack of drama. Jay gets into big trouble and then even worse trouble. But part of my purpose in writing this story is to show that gunfights and bloodbaths are not necessary in a western novel, and in fact can be rather dull and sterile compared to the many other ways to spin a novel of the American West. New York publishers, wedded to their current diet of high body counts and constant violence, didn't buy this one. Maybe that is their loss, or the public's loss.
September 4, 2012
Formulaic Westerns
Back when I first began to write western fiction, there was a lot of leeway about what publishers would accept. In fact, the field was broad enough so that publishers had differing ideas about what they wanted, and these varied sharply.
When I edited the Walker and Company western line in the mid-eighties, the company imposed no restrictions at all on me. I was free to purchase whatever I deemed a good story, or a story with strong market potential.
Of course authors at that time didn't quite see it that way, and grumbled about the requirements imposed by publishers. But compared to recent times, both writers and editors of western fiction had broad latitude about what could be published.
I experimented both as an editor and a writer, with mixed success. One of my early novels, Montana Hitch, dealt with a topic rarely seen in western fiction-- domestic abuse. A rancher's marriage had gone to hell; his wife was bankrupting him; the wife ran off with a local predator who wanted to devour neighboring ranches. And the predator was cruel to her, so she was worse off then before. Well, in spite of the rare story line, it was published hardcover and then picked up for a mass market edition.
I wrote all sorts of stories that differed sharply from the run-of-the-mill western, and they were all published. That is no longer possible. The remaining western publishers have rigid ideas about what they want, supposedly justified by sales, and reject anything that varies from their formula. The result is endless sameness, not only in theme but also in the types of characters, and the situations they fall into. Westerns today are even more formulaic than romance novels, where the romance writer must follow a script that tells just where in the story certain events must take place.
Why anyone would want to be a New York-published western writer now I can't imagine.
When I edited the Walker and Company western line in the mid-eighties, the company imposed no restrictions at all on me. I was free to purchase whatever I deemed a good story, or a story with strong market potential.
Of course authors at that time didn't quite see it that way, and grumbled about the requirements imposed by publishers. But compared to recent times, both writers and editors of western fiction had broad latitude about what could be published.
I experimented both as an editor and a writer, with mixed success. One of my early novels, Montana Hitch, dealt with a topic rarely seen in western fiction-- domestic abuse. A rancher's marriage had gone to hell; his wife was bankrupting him; the wife ran off with a local predator who wanted to devour neighboring ranches. And the predator was cruel to her, so she was worse off then before. Well, in spite of the rare story line, it was published hardcover and then picked up for a mass market edition.
I wrote all sorts of stories that differed sharply from the run-of-the-mill western, and they were all published. That is no longer possible. The remaining western publishers have rigid ideas about what they want, supposedly justified by sales, and reject anything that varies from their formula. The result is endless sameness, not only in theme but also in the types of characters, and the situations they fall into. Westerns today are even more formulaic than romance novels, where the romance writer must follow a script that tells just where in the story certain events must take place.
Why anyone would want to be a New York-published western writer now I can't imagine.
September 3, 2012
Learning to Write
When I first joined Western Writers of America over thirty years ago, I headed for each convention, determined to blot up as much as I could of the world of the western. In those days, the members loved to get together each evening in the hotel bar and share the lore of writing. We would crowd around tables, and exchange ideas. Usually there would be some old timers who had come up through the pulps and mass market paperbacks. There were New York editors on hand, enjoying the conversation, and getting to know the novelists crowded around them. And sometimes literary agents joined us.
We rarely talked about the West and its lore; we talked about writing, or about hooking readers into the story, and how to end a novel, or how to create memorable characters. In short, the lore that I blotted up during those conventions was writing lore. Surrounded by veteran novelists and writers, I couldn't help but learn my craft. The old guys generously shared their insights with neophytes like me, and often the editors picked up tips and ideas from the novelists. In fact, those hotel bar sessions were an education for the New York editors as well as the rest of us.
I loved those evenings, which often lasted well past midnight and made us all pretty foggy during the daily convention events. But the freely flowing talk in the evenings proved more important to me than the formal convention activities, and I considered those exchanges of ideas about the art and craft that go into a great story to be the key to my own success. I was an eager student. These guys had written amazing novels, wildly inventive stories, filled with memorable characters, and I was lucky enough to blot up everything they said about how they did it. They all approached the task in their own fashion. Some wrote character sketches or even biographies in advance. Some plotted everything. Others just sailed into a story without knowing where it would go. I learned that each novelist needs to evolve his own way of writing a story.
That was my education. I suppose some of that lore can be gotten from creative writing classes in universities these days, or Master of Fine Arts programs. But I got it in convention hotels, listening to the give and take of some of the best novelists I have ever known. That's all gone now. Members don't collect at conventions to exchange their lore, or their war stories, or their insights about fiction any more. I don't know why.
We rarely talked about the West and its lore; we talked about writing, or about hooking readers into the story, and how to end a novel, or how to create memorable characters. In short, the lore that I blotted up during those conventions was writing lore. Surrounded by veteran novelists and writers, I couldn't help but learn my craft. The old guys generously shared their insights with neophytes like me, and often the editors picked up tips and ideas from the novelists. In fact, those hotel bar sessions were an education for the New York editors as well as the rest of us.
I loved those evenings, which often lasted well past midnight and made us all pretty foggy during the daily convention events. But the freely flowing talk in the evenings proved more important to me than the formal convention activities, and I considered those exchanges of ideas about the art and craft that go into a great story to be the key to my own success. I was an eager student. These guys had written amazing novels, wildly inventive stories, filled with memorable characters, and I was lucky enough to blot up everything they said about how they did it. They all approached the task in their own fashion. Some wrote character sketches or even biographies in advance. Some plotted everything. Others just sailed into a story without knowing where it would go. I learned that each novelist needs to evolve his own way of writing a story.
That was my education. I suppose some of that lore can be gotten from creative writing classes in universities these days, or Master of Fine Arts programs. But I got it in convention hotels, listening to the give and take of some of the best novelists I have ever known. That's all gone now. Members don't collect at conventions to exchange their lore, or their war stories, or their insights about fiction any more. I don't know why.
August 14, 2012
The Literary Backwater
This will be the last of my thoughts about violence in Westerns. Most people think of the two as synonymous. If it's a Western, the characters are going to die a violent death from gunshot. I suspect that most western writers have never written a novel in which no one is killed by gunfire. That is, even among the current crop of authors there is little perception of western stories with minimal gunfire.
This melding of the frontier West with multiple depicted killings has stamped the genre and cannot be undone. The violence turns off the vast majority of readers, even as it captures a dedicated few, so that the genre will operate in a backwater, profitable because a small cadre of readers will continue to purchase it, but excluded from major sales because the violence repels so many. There will continue to be a few guys who can pound out a living from all this, mostly by writing several killer potboilers a year, but there is not much prospect of the sort of income that can be won in other genres, especially mysteries and romances and thrillers, where the readership can be vast.
So the violent western is self-limiting, a permanent fixture produced steadily by two houses, Berkley and Pinnacle, and sporadically elsewhere as publishers continue to sample the market. How different that is from the days when a dozen houses were generating novels for both the mass market and library trade. In one sense the Western is defunct; it will never recover the prestige and esteem and market it had when it was broader. In another sense it lives on, with narrow and violent stories, produced by authors of the same nature, and read by readers of the same nature.
I think the broader Western might survive, and even be published by prestigious houses once again. I'm speaking of the classical Western, with cattle drives, mining camps, ranch rivalries, cowboy romances, and military adventures. Maybe a future Bill Gulick will come along and write a story as rich as The Hallelujah Train, or a future Elmer Kelton will come along, and write a story as engaging as The Time It Never Rained. But the gunman incubus hangs over the field, creating a permanent prejudice against stories of the West in the minds of most people.
This melding of the frontier West with multiple depicted killings has stamped the genre and cannot be undone. The violence turns off the vast majority of readers, even as it captures a dedicated few, so that the genre will operate in a backwater, profitable because a small cadre of readers will continue to purchase it, but excluded from major sales because the violence repels so many. There will continue to be a few guys who can pound out a living from all this, mostly by writing several killer potboilers a year, but there is not much prospect of the sort of income that can be won in other genres, especially mysteries and romances and thrillers, where the readership can be vast.
So the violent western is self-limiting, a permanent fixture produced steadily by two houses, Berkley and Pinnacle, and sporadically elsewhere as publishers continue to sample the market. How different that is from the days when a dozen houses were generating novels for both the mass market and library trade. In one sense the Western is defunct; it will never recover the prestige and esteem and market it had when it was broader. In another sense it lives on, with narrow and violent stories, produced by authors of the same nature, and read by readers of the same nature.
I think the broader Western might survive, and even be published by prestigious houses once again. I'm speaking of the classical Western, with cattle drives, mining camps, ranch rivalries, cowboy romances, and military adventures. Maybe a future Bill Gulick will come along and write a story as rich as The Hallelujah Train, or a future Elmer Kelton will come along, and write a story as engaging as The Time It Never Rained. But the gunman incubus hangs over the field, creating a permanent prejudice against stories of the West in the minds of most people.
August 12, 2012
Southerns
I've given much thought recently to violence-saturated western fiction. Gunfights, high body counts, trivialized killing have pervaded the genre to the point where few western stories are about anything else. To read a western is to read a novel loaded with bloodletting, often treated as an amusement.
I've wondered why this has come about. When I began writing western stories in the mid-seventies, this sort of endemic butchery was not present. I've come to realize that this trend is about the disappearance of Westerns, and the rise of Southerns. Nearly all of these high-body-count stories are set in the extended South or its borderlands, including Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, and Arizona. These gunman stories are much less likely to be set in Nebraska, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, or Idaho, and don't often appear in the middle states of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. Texas, especially, is the setting for a vast amount of murder.
These stories that depict wholesale killing are a part and parcel of southern values. The South has always been careless about life and liberty. It was lynching people up until the 1960s. In 1918, southern white senators blocked a bill in Congress that would criminalize lynching. Death resides in the southern disposition, and now is showing up copiously in these gunman stories. It is no accident that the protagonists, if they are developed characters at all, are ex-Confederates. I don't know of any of these gunfighter stories that features a northern protagonist, though there may be a few around somewhere.
These high-body-count stories really should be called Southerns, because they epitomize the values underlying the South. To this day, the South is the country's main supplier of soldiers. These "Southerns," as I would rename them, are largely drawn from the same casualness about killing. I would be pleased if publishers of these stories, and distributors and retailers, renamed them Southerns, and freed the Western field to return to its traditional values.
I've wondered why this has come about. When I began writing western stories in the mid-seventies, this sort of endemic butchery was not present. I've come to realize that this trend is about the disappearance of Westerns, and the rise of Southerns. Nearly all of these high-body-count stories are set in the extended South or its borderlands, including Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, and Arizona. These gunman stories are much less likely to be set in Nebraska, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, or Idaho, and don't often appear in the middle states of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. Texas, especially, is the setting for a vast amount of murder.
These stories that depict wholesale killing are a part and parcel of southern values. The South has always been careless about life and liberty. It was lynching people up until the 1960s. In 1918, southern white senators blocked a bill in Congress that would criminalize lynching. Death resides in the southern disposition, and now is showing up copiously in these gunman stories. It is no accident that the protagonists, if they are developed characters at all, are ex-Confederates. I don't know of any of these gunfighter stories that features a northern protagonist, though there may be a few around somewhere.
These high-body-count stories really should be called Southerns, because they epitomize the values underlying the South. To this day, the South is the country's main supplier of soldiers. These "Southerns," as I would rename them, are largely drawn from the same casualness about killing. I would be pleased if publishers of these stories, and distributors and retailers, renamed them Southerns, and freed the Western field to return to its traditional values.
August 11, 2012
The Death Genre
The amount of killing that goes on in western fiction is astonishing. Nearly every story is centered around violent death, usually by gunshot. Even the more subdued westerns flaunt their share of gunshots, hangings, knifings, and assorted murders. The amount of slaughter far exceeds that of any other genre. Crime and mystery fiction have their share, but nothing like the slaughter that occurs in western after western.
Westerns weren't always so bloody, and violent death was not treated as a trivial event. And earlier westerns didn't celebrate or glamorize killers. I don't know how the genre became so death-saturated, or why authors think it is necessary to glamorize violent death. One can only wonder what sort of mortals write the murderous stories that flood the western bays now. I don't think I would want to know most of them.
The genre itself no longer deserves the name Western; apart from a 19th century frontier setting, it rarely deals with the West. Distributors and publishers should simply change the name to the gunman genre, or the killer genre, and leave the Western designation to people who want to write about the West.
Westerns weren't always so bloody, and violent death was not treated as a trivial event. And earlier westerns didn't celebrate or glamorize killers. I don't know how the genre became so death-saturated, or why authors think it is necessary to glamorize violent death. One can only wonder what sort of mortals write the murderous stories that flood the western bays now. I don't think I would want to know most of them.
The genre itself no longer deserves the name Western; apart from a 19th century frontier setting, it rarely deals with the West. Distributors and publishers should simply change the name to the gunman genre, or the killer genre, and leave the Western designation to people who want to write about the West.
August 2, 2012
Butte Is Endlessly Fascinating
I've finished Ivan Doig's fine novel about Butte, Work Song. It is set in 1919, in the midst of Butte's labor strife.
At that point, Butte was the largest city in Montana, with about 60,000 people. It was ruthlessly controlled by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, which employed thugs to keep the working people intimidated.
Mr. Doig's story is about an unemployed accountant who meets working people at a genteel boarding house, and soon is converted to their views about the malevolent company. He is actually a scholar and brings some sense of history and perspective to his life, and suggests that songs have a powerful grip on people,and can be valuable to union organizers.
And there the story takes an odd turn, and Morrie, our hero, sets out to write some musical inspiration for his friends. The storyline is oddly genteel in dark and brutal Butte, but at the same time absorbing.
Thus, in a town where company goons, possibly Pinkerton men, have lynched an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World, Doig takes us to inspirational music. That makes the novel unique and absorbing, and one I admire.
At that point, Butte was the largest city in Montana, with about 60,000 people. It was ruthlessly controlled by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, which employed thugs to keep the working people intimidated.
Mr. Doig's story is about an unemployed accountant who meets working people at a genteel boarding house, and soon is converted to their views about the malevolent company. He is actually a scholar and brings some sense of history and perspective to his life, and suggests that songs have a powerful grip on people,and can be valuable to union organizers.
And there the story takes an odd turn, and Morrie, our hero, sets out to write some musical inspiration for his friends. The storyline is oddly genteel in dark and brutal Butte, but at the same time absorbing.
Thus, in a town where company goons, possibly Pinkerton men, have lynched an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World, Doig takes us to inspirational music. That makes the novel unique and absorbing, and one I admire.
