Review by New York Times Review
"HERE, as sudden and surprising as a lost city of legendary times, was a metropolis of nowhere: nearly a hundred thousand people atop the earth's mineral crown, with nothing else around but the Rocky Mountains and the witnessing sky." So observes Morrie Morgan, the hero of Ivan Doig's new novel, "Work Song" (and of an earlier one, "The Whistling Season"), upon his arrival in Butte, Mont., in the postwar heyday of 1919. The Western landscape is a strong component in the book, yet this is one of the few passages that allude to Montana's Big Sky. Instead, Doig concentrates on interior spaces: the majestic town library, the modest dining room of the fetching widow Grace Faraday's boarding house, and the most deeply interior settings of all - the copper mines, where men labor under perilous conditions. Butte suffers from a violent history, and the mining industry plagues daily life. Grace's husband died in a mining fire, and her boarding house frequently shakes from underground dynamite. Poverty threatens to overtake the whole city: one kid is so skinny his nickname is "Russian Famine." Morrie initially plans to offer his bookkeeping services to the behemoth Anaconda mining company. But when it becomes clear that many of Butte's citizens consider "wearing the copper collar" to be nothing short of devil's work, he pursues other employment instead and lands a dream job in the town's public library. There he meets a character named Mr. Sandison ("Call me Sandy"), who is so white-bearded and booming-voiced that - although Morrie wonders time and again whether he might be evil - it is difficult not to think of God himself, or at least Charlton Heston in "The Ten Commandments." Sandison commands authority from the helm of the library, a veritable freedom ship, with "so many men settled at tables and in corners with newsprint spread wide that the Reading Room took on the look of a schooner under sail." One regular patron turns out to be Morrie's old student from "The Whistling Season," the feisty and fashionable Rabrab, who is now engaged to the mining union's charismatic leader. And so Morrie's fate becomes entwined with that of the beleaguered workers. Doig is a Montana native and an accomplished author of 13 works of fiction and nonfiction. Though sometimes his prose veers toward the clichéd ("I felt like an author drawing a scene to a successful close"), not one stitch unravels in this intricately threaded narrative. And while Doig lays out the plot somewhat predictably, he also makes room for reflective moments in which Morrie confronts fears both real and imagined; it's through these reflections that we get fine glimpses of his darker persona. "With the single-mindedness of the inebriated," Morrie says, "I crept cautiously past, as if the yawning pit, darker than dark, might empty itself upward over me in an eruption of shadow." In conjunction with Morrie's interactions among the other characters, these more introspective passages help to build an appealing storytelling rhythm. And rhythm, in the world of this novel, is anything but incidental. As the title suggests, music is as alive in these pages as it has been in any of Doig's previous books, ennobling the miners in their struggle. When Morrie hears one "sweet damn tune" for the very first time, he makes an observation that could just as easily describe the novel itself: "It was distinctly old-fashioned, it was not particularly profound, but most of all, it was infectious." Joanna Hershon is the author of three novels, including, most recently, "The German Bride."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 4, 2010]
Review by Booklist Review
Doig's fictional forays into Montana history have long been distinguished by the author's ability to make compelling human drama out of the small-canvas concerns of everyday people. He did it with a one-room school in the outstanding Whistling Season (2006), and he does it again here with seemingly even more mundane subjects: the on-the-job tribulations of a librarian and the composition of a work song to inspire the beleaguered miners in Butte, Montana, in the early twentieth century. The librarian, the charismatic, quasi-con man Morrie Morris, returns from his stint as a teacher in Whistling Season; this time he lands in Butte eager to fill his pockets with some of the cash that's pouring from the city's copper mines but winds up working in the library instead. That leads to some clandestine songwriting, as the local miners attempt to create a suitably moving ditty to drive the troops in what looks like an upcoming strike. As usual, Doig incorporates plenty of large-canvas history into his mix of romance and human drama the role of the Wobblies in confronting the West's implacable industrialists; the particulars of coal mining; and even the Black Sox scandal in the 1919 World Series and, also as usual, he tiptoes ever so carefully on the literary ledge that separates warm, character-driven drama from sentimental melodrama. He nearly loses his footing a time or two here, unlike in the perfectly balanced Whistling Season, but on the whole, this is an engaging, leisurely paced look at labor, libraries, and love in a roughneck mining town.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Doig affectionately revisits Morris "Morrie" Morgan from the much-heralded The Whistling Season. Now, 10 years later, in 1919, Morrie lands in Butte, Mont., beholding the area's natural beauty that "made a person look twice." Scoring a job is a top priority, as is getting more face time with Grace Faraday, the alluring widow who runs the boardinghouse where he stays. Things, naturally, are complicated, as the fiendishly bookish Morrie is on the run from Chicago gangsters who feel they've been duped after he scored a windfall from a fixed sports wager. The local "shysters" at the duplicitous Anaconda Copper Mining Company, meanwhile, find Morrie's sudden interest in Butte highly suspicious as they try to bully Grace into selling her property. Morrie lands what might be an ideal job working at the public library with ex-cattle rancher Samuel Sandison, though our sturdy narrator must choose sides when the mining company ups the ante. Drama ebbs and flows as Morrie yields to the plight of union leader Jared Evans, and Morrie and Samuel come to terms with sins from their pasts. Charismatic dialogue and charming, homespun characterization make Doig's latest another surefire winner. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Doig's eagerly awaited sequel to The Whistling Season (2006) begins ten years later in 1919, when Morrie Morgan gets off the train in Butte, MT, "the richest hill on earth," run by Anaconda Copper. He settles into a boardinghouse run by the widow Grace and is befriended by her other boarders, Griff and Hoop, two retired miners who tell Morrie what's going on in town. Scholarly Morrie finds his niche at the public library, the domain of a crusty retired rancher named Sandison, who comes with the territory because the entire library is his own magnificent book collection. Before long, Morrie discovers he's being shadowed by Anaconda's thugs for being a strike agitator, when, in fact, he tries not to take sides in the miners vs. Anaconda dispute. He can't stay neutral for long, however-his knowledge of bookkeeping provides the miners' union with a bargaining chip. His musical talent helps 200 tough, rock-hard miners, smuggled into the library basement after hours, compose a rousing strike song that will bolster their courage during coming hard times. VERDICT Doig delivers solid storytelling with a keen respect for the past and gives voice to his characters in a humorous and affectionate light. Recommend this to everyone you know; essential. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 3/1/10.]-Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
