Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets off a Struggle for the Soul of America

Hailed as "toweringly important" (Baltimore Sun), "a work of scrupulous & significant reportage" (E.L. Doctorow) & "an unforgettable historical drama" (Chicago Sun-Times), Big Trouble brings to life the astonishing case that ultimately engaged President Theodore Roosevelt, Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes & the politics & passions of an entire nation at century's turn. After Idaho's former governor is blown up by a bomb at his garden gate at Christmastime 1905, America's most celebrated detective, Pinkerton James McParland, takes over the investigation. His daringly executed plan to kidnap the radical union leader Big Bill Haywood from Colorado to stand trial in Idaho sets the stage for a memorable courtroom confrontation between the flamboyant prosecutor, progressive senator Wm Borah, & the young defender of the dispossessed, Clarence Darrow. Big Trouble captures the tumultuous 1st decade of the century, when capital & labor, particularly in the raw, acquisitive West, were pitted against each other in something close to class war. Lukas paints a vivid portrait of a time & place in which actress Ethel Barrymore, baseball star Walter Johnson & editor Wm Allen White jostled with railroad magnate E.H. Harriman, socialist Eugene V. Debs, gunslinger Charlie Siringo & Operative 21, the intrepid Pinkerton agent who infiltrated Darrow's defense team. This is a grand narrative of the USA as it charged, full of hope & trepidation, into the 20th century.