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UNDER THE GALLUS FRAME
In 1889, to save his honor, seventeen-year-old Ljubica’s selfish father forces her to journey from Croatia to Butte, Montana, and marry forty-year-old Vik Bartolji whose cruelty not only affects her life but her name, as he changes it to Marija. She refuses to satisfy Vik’s lust before their marriage and sets the pace for their fiery relationship in a town called The Richest Hill on Earth where men deemed Copper Kings make vast fortunes from mining the rich ore hidden beneath the gallus frames, triangles of steel that dotted the hills, drawing money out of Butte on the back of thousands of miners who work underground in horrendous conditions.
While Vik finds his pleasure in the arms of a brothel madam, Marija educates herself and finds love, wealth and social status with her second husband. She reins as Matriarch of her family. Her children become leaders in The Company, The Miners’ Union, and The Church.
Like Butte, where the copper and zinc mined from the miles of tunnels beneath the city are melded together to become a stronger metal—brass—Marija and her family weather multiple hardships and merge from the crucible of adversity, stronger than ever before, though marked by their diverse experiences.
While Vik finds his pleasure in the arms of a brothel madam, Marija educates herself and finds love, wealth and social status with her second husband. She reins as Matriarch of her family. Her children become leaders in The Company, The Miners’ Union, and The Church.
Like Butte, where the copper and zinc mined from the miles of tunnels beneath the city are melded together to become a stronger metal—brass—Marija and her family weather multiple hardships and merge from the crucible of adversity, stronger than ever before, though marked by their diverse experiences.
520 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 1, 2006
1 person is currently reading
3 people want to read
About the author
Darlene Matule
5 books2 followersI spent my childhood in Glasgow, Montana, a town of 5000 (some say that number includes the dogs and cats), a town so safe a pubescent girl could walk home alone at 11 p.m. after seeing a movie with a friend. With no fear of abduction—or worse. So inept at sports that I was always the last one chosen to play a compulsory game of playground baseball, to my credit I could beat little-old-ladies in a no-holds-barred game of whist. And did. For ten years I took piano lessons from an elegant woman with a name that emotes talent—Florence Fennessey Friedland. However. after a decade of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, my musical talent is a life-long love of Gershwin, especially Rhapsody in Blue, with excellent keyboard skills thrown in as an aside.
Sewing and 4-H were my vehicles to success. After college (majored in home economics and minored in journalism), I married the love-of-my-life, Steve, had two daughters and, until my youngest was in 4th grade, was a stay-at-home-mom. I joined too many women’s organizations to mention, looking for fulfillment. Bored, one October Friday, I took a one-day, five-dollar-an-hour job because I “didn’t have any plans that day.” I found business was more fun than staying at home.
Until—on a trip to (then) Yugoslavia—I became a writer. One day I sat in a 19th century farmhouse kitchen in the heart of Croatia drinking the potent plum brandy called sljivovica and eating bread fresh from the corner brick oven and asked myself, “What if?” I've set my novels (Under the Gallus Frame and the sequel Framework of a Family) in places I know from two trips to Yugoslavia/Croatia and a lifetime of learning about the “Mining Capital of the World”— Butte Montana.
After years of working in the business world, I am now a full-time author, part-time volunteer, and dedicated reader. I find researching and/or writing books to be fulfilling and fun. I also enjoy my daughters and three grandsons, getting dirt under my fingernails working in the garden, and traveling with my husband, Steve.
Sewing and 4-H were my vehicles to success. After college (majored in home economics and minored in journalism), I married the love-of-my-life, Steve, had two daughters and, until my youngest was in 4th grade, was a stay-at-home-mom. I joined too many women’s organizations to mention, looking for fulfillment. Bored, one October Friday, I took a one-day, five-dollar-an-hour job because I “didn’t have any plans that day.” I found business was more fun than staying at home.
Until—on a trip to (then) Yugoslavia—I became a writer. One day I sat in a 19th century farmhouse kitchen in the heart of Croatia drinking the potent plum brandy called sljivovica and eating bread fresh from the corner brick oven and asked myself, “What if?” I've set my novels (Under the Gallus Frame and the sequel Framework of a Family) in places I know from two trips to Yugoslavia/Croatia and a lifetime of learning about the “Mining Capital of the World”— Butte Montana.
After years of working in the business world, I am now a full-time author, part-time volunteer, and dedicated reader. I find researching and/or writing books to be fulfilling and fun. I also enjoy my daughters and three grandsons, getting dirt under my fingernails working in the garden, and traveling with my husband, Steve.
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March 31, 2021
Extraordinary storytelling. Beautifully crafted, solidly researched with characters that stick with you. The novel insightfully (and accurately) takes the reader on a journey into the early mining history of hell-roaring Butte, Montana. This historical fiction reminds me of the works of Anna Petken.
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