Sweet Thunder
Ivan Doig, 2013
Penguin Group USA
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594487347
Summary
A beloved character brings the power of the press to 1920s Butte, Montana, in this latest from the best storyteller of the West
In the winter of 1920, a quirky bequest draws Morrie Morgan back to Butte, Montana, from a year-long honeymoon with his bride, Grace. But the mansion bestowed by a former boss upon the itinerant charmer, who debuted in Doig’s bestselling The Whistling Season, promises to be less windfall than money pit.
And the town itself, with its polyglot army of miners struggling to extricate themselves from the stranglehold of the ruthless Anaconda Copper Mining Company, seems—like the couple’s fast-diminishing finances—on the verge of implosion.
These twin dilemmas catapult Morrie into his new career as editorialist for the Thunder, the fledgling union newspaper that dares to play David to Anaconda’s Goliath. Amid the clatter of typewriters, the rumble of the printing presses, and a cast of unforgettable characters, Morrie puts his gift for word-slinging to work. As he pursues victory for the miners, he discovers that he is enmeshed in a deeply personal battle as well—the struggle to win lasting love for himself.
Brilliantly capturing an America roaring into a new age, Sweet Thunder is another great tale from a classic American novelist. (From the publisher.)
Sweet Thunder is the final novel in a trilogy—beginning with The Whistling Season (2006), followed by Work Song (2010)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 27, 1939
• Where—White Sulphur Springs, Montana, USA
• Death—April 9, 2015
• Where—Seattle, Washington
• Education—B.A., M.A., Northwestern University; Ph.D., University of Washington
Ivan Doig was born in Montana to a family of home-steaders and ranch hands. After the death of his mother Berneta, on his sixth birthday, he was raised by his father Charles "Charlie" Doig and his grandmother Elizabeth "Bessie" Ringer. After several stints on ranches, they moved to Dupuyer, Pondera County, Montana in the north to herd sheep close to the Rocky Mountain front.
After his graduation from Valier high school, Doig attended Northwestern University, where he received a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in journalism. He later earned a Ph.D. in American history at the University of Washington, writing his dissertation about John J. McGilvra (1827-1903). He now lives with his wife Carol Doig, nee Muller, a university professor of English, in Seattle, Washington.
Before he became a novelist, Doig wrote for newspapers and magazines as a free-lancer and worked for the United States Forest Service. He has also published two memoirs—This House of Sky (1979) and Heart Earth (1993).
Much of his fiction (more than 10 novels) is set in the Montana country of his youth. His major theme is family life in the past, mixing personal memory and regional history. As the western landscape and people play an important role in his fiction, he has been hailed as the new dean of western literature, a worthy successor to Wallace Stegner. (From Wikipedia.)
Extras
His own words:
• Taking apart a career in such summary sentences always seems to me like dissecting a frog—some of the life inevitably goes out of it—and so I think the more pertinent Ivan Doig for you, Reader, is the red-headed only child, son of ranch hand Charlie Doig and ranch cook Berneta Ringer Doig (who died of her lifelong asthma on my sixth birthday), who in his junior year of high school (Valier, Montana; my class of 1957 had 21 members) made up his mind to be a writer of some kind.
• No one is likely to confuse my writing style with that of Charlotte Bronte, but when that impassioned parson’s daughter lifted her pen from Jane Eyre and bequeathed us the most intriguing of plot summaries—"Reader, I married him"—she also was subliminally saying what any novelist ... must croon to those of you with your eyes on our pages: "Reader, my story is flirting with you; please love it back."
• One last word about the setting of my work, the American West. I don’t think of myself as a "Western" writer. To me, language—the substance on the page, that poetry under the prose—is the ultimate "region," the true home, for a writer. Specific geographies, but galaxies of imaginative expression —we’ve seen them both exist in William Faulkner’s postage stamp-size Yoknapatawpha County, and in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s nowhere village of Macondo, dreaming in its hundred years of solitude. If I have any creed that I wish you as readers, necessary accomplices in this flirtatious ceremony of writing and reading, will take with you from my pages, it’d be this belief of mine that writers of caliber can ground their work in specific land and lingo and yet be writing of that larger country: life. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Filled with an abundance of rich characters… it is Butte itself, a tough-fisted city of plungers and promoters, bootleggers and union workers, sharpers and window men and crooked boxers, that binds the story together. Doig re-creates one of America's legendary cities and fills it with characters to match.
Denver Post
Doig, who holds a Ph.D. in history, is at his best in his historic novels, and he unspools this compelling tale among the clatter of typewriters and the 'sweet thunder' of printing presses… Marvelous… yet another Montana book worthy of Doig’s prodigious talents.
Seattle Times
There have been many charming rogues through literary history, and Mr. Doig brings us another one: Morrie Morgan… Doig has a gift of making oddballs believable and lovable, as well as a gift for capturing place and personality in deft strokes… an entertaining story at a high intellectual level.
New York Journal of Books
Butte, Montana in the 1920s meant Anaconda Copper Mining Company squeezing the town, its residents, and the land for everything they've got. Doig brings back the charismatic Morrie Morgan...last seen in 2010's Work Song, in this stirring tale of greed, corruption, and the power of past sins.... Doig's attention to detail, both historical and concerning characters of his own creation, is as sharp as ever.... [R]eaders both seasoned and new will fall under the spell of Doig's Big Sky Country.
Publishers Weekly
Morrie Morgan is back, accompanied by our favorite loopy characters from Doig's acclaimed Whistling Season and Work Song. It's 1920, and after a whirlwind honeymoon, Morrie and wife, Grace, return to Butte, MT, where despotic power resides under one mighty thumb, the Anaconda Copper Mining Company.... Verdict: With a master storyteller's instincts and a dollop of wry humor, Doig evokes a perfect landscape of the past with a cast of memorable characters. A treasure of a novel. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Palisade, CO
Library Journal
Think Shane but with dueling journalists instead of gunfighters… A stirring tale given a melancholic edge by the fading influence of print newspapers in our very different modern world.
Booklist
Morrie Morgan returns to again confront the evil Anaconda Copper Mining Company, as well as several unwelcome reminders of his checkered past.... Doig also quietly conveys the injustices and cruelties of American history, particularly in the realistically depressing and temporary resolution of the union's struggle with Anaconda.... [W]elcome evidence that Doig, in his 70s, is more prolific and entertaining than ever.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What about returning to Butte worries Morrie, and what about his new post at the Thunder has the potential to put him and Grace in danger? What do you make of Morrie's decisions?
2. Doig's website describes Sweet Thunder at one level as "a domestic romp of Shakespearean proportions" and a "high-spirited, inventive, but historically acute portrait of a conflicted America." Knowing this, how might it affect your reading of the novel?
3. Also by authorial intention, certain of the characters are larger than life. Which ones seem so to you, and what techniques of characterization are used to make them so?
4. When he first starts working at the Thunder, Morrie calls the newspaper a "daily miracle" and a "draft of history." What ideas-about the power of newspapers, of knowledge, and of history-is Doig exploring here and throughout the book?
5. Morrie also says that "A newspaper without a cause is little more than a tally sheet of mishaps," and takes pride in the Thunder as a publication rooted in justice and responsibility. Do you think the same could be said of any media outlets today?
6. A couple of times, Morrie as narrator and protagonist breaks the "fourth wall" between cast of characters and audience to speculate on how the story would suddenly be shown in a new light if one of his assumed or presumed identities was actually the true one. Do you find this a departure from the straightforward storytelling until then, or an enhancement of the novel's imaginative possibilities?
7. How does the struggle between the corporate power embodied by Anaconda and the individual power embodied by Morrie and the Thunder develop and change throughout the novel? How is it emblematic of larger themes in American history? Can you relate their conflict to American society today?
8. The value of fiction has been said to be telling a greater truth by making things up. Is this satisfactorily reflected in any of Morrie's shifting identities in the course of the story? Dubiously in any of them?
9. Morrie, one of Ivan's most popular characters, previously appeared in The Whistling Season and Work Song, along with several other characters in Sweet Thunder. If you're new to Morrie and the crew, which character was your favorite, and why? And if you're new to Doig, what aspects of his style did you enjoy or find unique? If you've read another Morrie novel, whom were you happiest to see again? What are some of the author's touches, especially in characterizations and use of locales and dialogue, that establish continuity throughout the trilogy?
(Questions from the author's website.)