![]() ![]() "Big Trouble" has much to say about America at the start of the 20th century. Actress Ethel Barrymore and baseball pitcher Walter Johnson, for instance, seem to pop up primarily because they were the most famous people who passed through Idaho at this time, which suggests Lukas may have been having trouble with his focus. But by inserting them between every line of the plot, Lukas puts great pressure on himself to make the resulting story as sweeping, grand and complex as America itself.Īpparently he felt he did not and to an extent, he's right. Over more than 750 pages, plus postscripts and footnotes, Lukas brings in the gold standard, the dilemma of post-Civil War black Army regiments, the politics of the Western railroad, the history of the Pinkerton detective agency and every nuance of leadership struggles within the radical labor movement. William Borah, a famous U.īut that's just the headline-news version, which is not what "Big Trouble" sets out to deliver. ![]() ![]() ![]() The famous Clarence Darrow defended this trio, which included the famous Bill Haygood. It was no surprise, then, that three radical union activists became the prime murder suspects, accused of whacking The Governor in an act of terrorism designed to intimidate all corporate sympathizers. Meanwhile, Idaho was also torn with labor strife, as prosperous mine owners battled efforts by workers to organize. ![]()
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