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Review by David Pitt
On December 30, 1905, a bomb exploded, killing -- almost tearing to bits -- the former Governor of Idaho, Frank Steunenberg. The assassin, a drifter who called himself Thomas Hogan, turned out to be an ex-miner who claimed to be part of a conspiracy whose intricacy would make it the ideal subject for Oliver Stone's next film.
"Big Trouble" is an epic saga, the story not only of a murder but of a class war that was tearing apart the country. Lukas structures the book very much like a mystery novel, following the investigation from its beginning, revealing new information (Steunenberg may not have been an entirely innocent victim), and executing neck-wrenching right-angle turns that will keep readers guessing until the final scenes are played out.
In telling this big story, Lukas, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner (the first for his work as a reporter for the "New York Times," the second for his book "Common Ground"), was faced with a tricky problem: it is impossible to understand the Governor's murder without understanding the class war -- laborers versus capitalists -- that had turned most of America into a battlefield.
The Governor's assassination was (or at least it appears to have been) the latest shot fired in the bloody war between Idaho's mining companies, who often used unskilled laborers, and unionized miners, who weren't happy about it. Years earlier, the Governor had prosecuted nine rioting miners for murder, and the theory was that his assassination was ordered by the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), a powerful and violent labor union.
There is nothing more dull than a long, dry history book. Thankfully, Lukas is a top-notch storyteller, and (again, as though he were writing a novel) he tells this complicated story by concentrating on its characters: Bill Haywood, the notorious (and feared) secretary-treasurer of WFM; James MacParland, the Pinkerton operative famous for his infiltration of the Irish Catholic anarchist group the Molly Macguires, who kidnapped Haywood in Colorado and brought him to Idaho to stand trial for Steunenberg's murder; Clarence Darrow, the noted defender of accused conspirators (including Eugene Debs), who took on the seemingly hopeless task of defending Haywood, and won; and a large supporting cast that includes Ethel Barrymore and Theodore Roosevelt.
Despite its length (nearly 600 pages), "Big Trouble" is remarkably fast paced. Written for a general audience, it's informative without being too scholarly, detailed without being overwhelming. In the midst of the political intrigue and historial analysis, Lukas never loses sight of the single most important image: a man murdered by an assassin's bomb. And it is that image that haunts us, long after the last page has been turned.
David Pitt is a reviewer in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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