Work Song
by Ivan Doig
Summary
Award-winning and beloved novelist Ivan Doig 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, in Ivan Doig's 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; mining company goons; a comely landlady propitiously named Grace; and an eccentric librarian whose whispered nickname a source of inexplicable terror. When Morrie crosses paths with a 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.
Praise
"Doig's eagerly awaited sequel to The Whistling Season ...Recommend this to everyone you know" — Library Journal
"[Doig's] ear for the way people spoke and thought in times gone by is as faultless as ever." — Kirkus Reviews
"Charismatic dialogue and charming, homespun characterization ... another surefire winner." — Publishers Weekly
"not one stitch unravels in this intricately threaded narrative" — The New York Times
"The most tumultuous, 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
"Butte is by far the most colorful town in Montana, a kaleidoscope of culture, commerce, and copper mines, the perfect palette for an artist like Ivan Doig. Work Song doesn't just hum along — it's rich authenticity echoes and resonates." — Jamie Ford, author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
About the Author
Our profound and lyric voice of the west, Ivan Doig is the best-selling author of ten previous books, including Prairie Nocturne, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, The Whistling Season and This House of Sky. A National Book Award finalist, Doig has received the Wallace Stegner Award, the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western Literature Association, and other honors. A former ranch hand, newspaperman, and magazine editor, Doig holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Washington. He lives in Seattle and can be visited at www.ivandoig.com.
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