Ivan Doig is a wordsmith of the first rank. I just finished reading his latest tome, Sweet Thunder, his fourteenth book. Many if not all are set in Montana during contemporary and historical time periods.
Sweet Thunder features Morrie Morgan (Llewellyn) who had previous appearances in The Whistling Season. I have not read that book but now I think I will. I can state that it is not necessary to read the books in sequence but it would have been a big help if I had done so.
The year is 1920 as the story opens. Morrie and Grace, his bride of a year, are in San Francisco. There they receive a summons from Morrie’s former boss one Sandy Sandison to come to Butte, Montana as quickly as possible. Morrie and Grace had been traveling the world on the proceeds of a bet that he had made on the outcome of the 1919 World Series (the infamous Chicago Black Sox scandal that nearly killed baseball). The Chicago Mob is trying to find out who made the bet because they lost a lot of money. That is the first of many scrapes that follow Morrie and Grace.
Once they arrive in Butte, the couple finds that Sandy wants to give them his mansion. To support his wife and house, Morrie gets a job on the Miners’ Union backed newspaper. The story documents some of the issues that the Union and Anaconda Copper battled over for years: a little history lesson that is easy to take. There are wonderful glimpses on how newspapers operated in the 1920s. You may even remember what a newspaper was/is.
My recommendation is get a copy of Sweet Thunder as fast as you can and READ it.
GO! BUY! READ!
—Jim Harris, retired book sales rep
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