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Marble Creek
A plot that could lose America World War I. His mentor murdered, but his life saved by a woman on a dark street in Seattle, Washington, in 1916, Pinkerton detective Robert Jamieson is later caught up in the Everett, Washington, Massacre while infiltrating the Industrial Workers of the World - the Wobblies. Accusing the Pinkerton agency of collusion, he quits to join the Army's fledgling Military Intelligence Division but, instead of being sent to France in 1917, he's assigned back to the Pacific Northwest with a mission to go undercover to track down Irish radical Malachi O'Neill, suspected in a gun-running scheme from Irish-dominated Butte, Montana, to Ireland. Find O'Neill, find the guns and forestall unrest in Ireland that would weaken America's ally, Great Britain, by forcing it to redeploy soldiers from the Western Front to Ireland, leaving America the burden of fighting Germany with insufficient troops. Locating O'Neill, Jamieson partners him in a remote logging camp on Marble Creek in north Idaho. Likeable, but deadly, O'Neill has shifted his loyalty from the disintegrating Wobblies to an incipient Irish rebellion. Fats Gerard, the complex villain of the piece, plays both sides and has an old score to settle with Jamieson. The course of the story unfolds as O'Neill plans the secret movement of guns and Jamieson dogs him , a dangerous game neither man can win until events force their hands along the Milwaukee Road railroad tracks near Marble Creek in the mountains of Idaho. A young prostitute helps one man to the detriment of the other. And the woman who saved Jamison's life in Seattle? Their paths are fated to cross again, at first in mistrust, for Addie MacLean harbors a secret that could change Jamieson's future, but later in mutual attraction, complicating Jamieson's pursuit of the Irishman. This historical detective thriller, filled with flawed, but believable characters, is set in the fomenting unrest of the Pacific Northwest during World War I. Spokane and Butte were under martial law; rights to free speech and assembly were suppressed; and the Department of Justice blessed the formation of the American Protective League, in which its secret members spied on fellow citizens for the government.
415 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 13, 2016
7 people are currently reading
301 people want to read
About the author
Karen Charbonneau
9 books32 followersI'm fascinated by seemingly unimportant bits of history that changed the future in unforeseen ways. Marble Creek is my third historical novel, following The Wolf's Sun and A Devil Singing Small.
I served as an Army JAGC captain (attorney) for seven years and later was a civilian attorney with the Department of Defense. I live and write on the 66 wooded acres in north Idaho where I grew up. My novels tend to be long with interwoven plots and are intended for adults. When not writing, I sell used and rare books, and odds and ends found at charity shops, on eBay.
Why this novel, Marble Creek? I began researching the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies); one discovery led to another. I was born in Spokane, Washington, but didn't know it was under martial law during World War I for being a hotbed of Wobbly activity in the I.W.W.'s fight for better working conditions, pay, and the 8-hour day in the timber industry. I didn't know that Butte, Montana, had the largest Irish immigrant population west of New York City and was opposed to the U.S. joining Ireland's suppressor, Great Britain, against the Germans; that federal troops patrolled its streets, fearing an "uprising" or sabotage of the copper mines. I didn't know about the American Protective League - a secret organization that spread across the country, sponsored by the Justice Department, its members spying on fellow citizens, seeking out German sympathizers, anti-war rhetoric, or failure to buy liberty bonds. I didn't know why the federal government systematically destroyed the Industrial Workers of the World, accusing its members of treason for attempting to organize laborers. The World War I era was a dangerous time for America's freedoms, but a great background for Marble Creek.
I served as an Army JAGC captain (attorney) for seven years and later was a civilian attorney with the Department of Defense. I live and write on the 66 wooded acres in north Idaho where I grew up. My novels tend to be long with interwoven plots and are intended for adults. When not writing, I sell used and rare books, and odds and ends found at charity shops, on eBay.
Why this novel, Marble Creek? I began researching the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies); one discovery led to another. I was born in Spokane, Washington, but didn't know it was under martial law during World War I for being a hotbed of Wobbly activity in the I.W.W.'s fight for better working conditions, pay, and the 8-hour day in the timber industry. I didn't know that Butte, Montana, had the largest Irish immigrant population west of New York City and was opposed to the U.S. joining Ireland's suppressor, Great Britain, against the Germans; that federal troops patrolled its streets, fearing an "uprising" or sabotage of the copper mines. I didn't know about the American Protective League - a secret organization that spread across the country, sponsored by the Justice Department, its members spying on fellow citizens, seeking out German sympathizers, anti-war rhetoric, or failure to buy liberty bonds. I didn't know why the federal government systematically destroyed the Industrial Workers of the World, accusing its members of treason for attempting to organize laborers. The World War I era was a dangerous time for America's freedoms, but a great background for Marble Creek.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 17, 2016
(After my initial review I considered again Charbonneau's achievement with this book and upgraded this rating from 4 to 5 stars. CRM)
Kindle Scout missed a great title with Karen Charbonneau’s exciting historical novel of the Pacific Northwest a century ago. I read the excerpt during her campaign in the Scout program, and I knew right away it was a high-quality offering. But Scout passed it by, and finally I have been able to read the whole thing.
In a breathless opening scene we are introduced to a man shot and on the run on dark and hilly city streets. The shabby young woman he runs into carries a message to a hotel phone, and thus we meet an investigative reporter and a Pinkerton detective in the morning of the 20th century in the hastily-built cities and logging camps of Washington and Idaho. Telephone and telegraph, railroad and world war, business and labor, and the good and bad guys and gals in stunning and stinking settings make for an atmospheric novel that treats of all these topics in genre elements of military suspense, political thriller, adventure, family saga, and romance.
It’s a lot to handle, but Charbonneau, clearly a master of the disparate elements, carries us deep into this world. I didn’t know much about the area’s history before reading the novel, but now I can talk of the I.W.W. and the Irish, logging, railroads, and grizzly bears with some confidence.
The weakest point in this work is in the family saga, a web of relationships that, in its “reveal” chapter set in a hospital, is so complex I had to read it over again to get things straight, and I’m still not quite sure about the birthmark. Part of the trouble comes in Charbonneau’s unique and usually-successful style that leaves out some attribution, but in this scene it’s hard to tell when something is a declaration of fact or a character’s mistaken mental affirmation. I would have enjoyed simplification of the plot here.
But this flaw is clearly overwhelmed by Charbonneau’s command of so much more, especially her gorgeous descriptions of the landscape and the trains, often in brief lines like this: “Fires normally move slowly downhill, but this was a locomotive racing down the canyon, sucking life from the forest.” Or in aphorisms tossed casually among the lines: “Moonshine might not make a man feel better about life, but it sure as hell makes him think it does.” (See more quotes in the Goodreads entry on this book.)
In one of my favorite episodes, about mountain folk who live beyond the law, the patriarch Ranney seemingly cruelly keeps a doomed dog alive to deliver the puppies he wants. But his practical brutality reveals his poetic soul and even his love for the dog:
The terrifying reality of a grizzly comes through in this paragraph:
Marble Creek was a joy to discover, and it deserves a wide and appreciative audience.
Kindle Scout missed a great title with Karen Charbonneau’s exciting historical novel of the Pacific Northwest a century ago. I read the excerpt during her campaign in the Scout program, and I knew right away it was a high-quality offering. But Scout passed it by, and finally I have been able to read the whole thing.
In a breathless opening scene we are introduced to a man shot and on the run on dark and hilly city streets. The shabby young woman he runs into carries a message to a hotel phone, and thus we meet an investigative reporter and a Pinkerton detective in the morning of the 20th century in the hastily-built cities and logging camps of Washington and Idaho. Telephone and telegraph, railroad and world war, business and labor, and the good and bad guys and gals in stunning and stinking settings make for an atmospheric novel that treats of all these topics in genre elements of military suspense, political thriller, adventure, family saga, and romance.
It’s a lot to handle, but Charbonneau, clearly a master of the disparate elements, carries us deep into this world. I didn’t know much about the area’s history before reading the novel, but now I can talk of the I.W.W. and the Irish, logging, railroads, and grizzly bears with some confidence.
The weakest point in this work is in the family saga, a web of relationships that, in its “reveal” chapter set in a hospital, is so complex I had to read it over again to get things straight, and I’m still not quite sure about the birthmark. Part of the trouble comes in Charbonneau’s unique and usually-successful style that leaves out some attribution, but in this scene it’s hard to tell when something is a declaration of fact or a character’s mistaken mental affirmation. I would have enjoyed simplification of the plot here.
But this flaw is clearly overwhelmed by Charbonneau’s command of so much more, especially her gorgeous descriptions of the landscape and the trains, often in brief lines like this: “Fires normally move slowly downhill, but this was a locomotive racing down the canyon, sucking life from the forest.” Or in aphorisms tossed casually among the lines: “Moonshine might not make a man feel better about life, but it sure as hell makes him think it does.” (See more quotes in the Goodreads entry on this book.)
In one of my favorite episodes, about mountain folk who live beyond the law, the patriarch Ranney seemingly cruelly keeps a doomed dog alive to deliver the puppies he wants. But his practical brutality reveals his poetic soul and even his love for the dog:
Ranney trod back into the room, wiping his hands on a rag. Said to his wife, "Three so far. I do believe she's fixin' to birth one more." He turned to Jamieson and O'Neill. "Ma bitch ba’ar dawg’s throwin’ pups. Best bitch I ever owned. Part Plott hound. A large cur showed up one day an’ we took him huntin'. When I seed his joy at goin' for the ba’ar, I covered her with him." He warmed to his subject. "Them pups'll have the hound scent to run down the ba’ar and the cur courage to tree h’it."
The terrifying reality of a grizzly comes through in this paragraph:
The sow grizzly normally denned above the timber line. Driven from a favorite cave by a heavier male and nursing a slashed haunch, she stalked down into timber, falling snow feathering the tips of her rough coat, until she arrived near a creek where she'd spent late summer eating berries. Under a windfall of dead cottonwoods, a bulwark against winter wind blasting down the canyon, she found a black bear curled in a den dug into a north-facing bluff. She roused it with a roar of carrion breath and chased it away.
Marble Creek was a joy to discover, and it deserves a wide and appreciative audience.
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February 6, 2017Not rating this one because it would be entirely based upon personal taste, as there was much more dialogue than I am able to appreciate. This is a well-written novel that reads much like a play. It reminds me a bit of Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, though I'm not sure why. Worth a read if excessive dialogue (written in a dialect, no less) doesn't bother you.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews