Books like Big Trouble by J. Anthony Lukas

The book opens on a snowy Christmas Eve in 1905, when former Governor Frank Steunenberg is killed in his hometown of Caldwell, Idaho. The death triggers a statewide manhunt that brings in Pinkerton detective James McParland. McParland’s interrogation of itinerant smuggler Harry Orchard reveals that the murder was carried out for the Western Federation of Miners, and that union leader Big Bill Haywood ordered the act in retaliation for Steunenberg’s suppression of a miner uprising six years earlier. The narrative follows the legal battle in Boise, where Haywood is defended by Clarence Darrow and prosecuted by William Borah. The case weaves together a cast of real historical figures—including railroad magnate E.H. Harriman, Secretary of War William Howard Taft, Socialist leader Eugene Debs, and others—displaying the political, social, and economic tensions of the era.

First publish date: 1997