How I Came To WRITE THIS BOOK-Richard Wheeler

Richard Wheeler's Work in Progress

I had proposed a novel about Baby Doe and Horace Tabor, the most poignant of all the legends of the West, but Forge turned it down. My alternative proposal was an historical novel about the copper kings of Butte, Marcus Daly, William Andrews Clark, and Augustus Heinze, and their "war" that involved corrupting the whole Montana legislature. My editor, Bob Gleason, went for it, saying his Finnish grandfather had worked in those mines.

The story resonates today because of the recent discovery of a 104-year-old daughter of one of the copper kings, Huguette Clark, sequestered for 22 years in a NYC hospital and possibly being milked by various people. Clark's fortune rivaled John D. Rockefeller's and the daughter still commands a fortune.

The book proved to be far more befuddling to write than I had imagined. The story, difficult to follow in nonfiction accounts, is too complex (and repetitious) to turn into a novel on its own. For months I wrestled with ways to tell the story about complex bribes, theft of mines, crooked judges, underground warfare with rival crews invading neighboring mines, the efforts of Clark to become a Senator by bribing the legislature, which resulted in the amendment establishing the direct election of senators, Heinze's bald theft of ore and property, etc.

I resolved the deepening dilemma by creating numerous fictional characters who are affected by the war of the copper kings. The kings corrupted the Montana press, so I created J. Fellowes Hall, a vain editor who sells his soul. The copper kings dealt with the miners union in various ways, so I have created Big Johnny Boyle, union head and a dealer. The kings radicalized Butte, so I created Alice Brophy, widow of Singing Sean Brophy, who becomes Red Alice, the Socialist Workers Party radical. I created Slanting Agnes Healy, a miner's widow with a fey gift. And I've created Royal Maxwell, an undertaker opposed to safety regulation of the mines, and a man who secretly scorns Butte's Irish and spends every spare dime in the restricted district.

I'm interweaving their stories with the struggles of the copper kings to own the richest hill on earth. There are also real characters, such as Judge William Clancy, an unkempt and barely literate Populist whose notion of law and justice is to remove property from those who have it and give it to those who don't. And of course there is the finest of the copper kings, Marcus Daly, who loved horse racing and built the finest racing stable in the nation. A portrait of his great horse Tammany, rendered in hardwoods, was embedded into the parquet floor of Daly's elegant hotel, and whoever stepped on Tammany had to buy drinks for the house.

The novel is finally yielding, after stubbornly resisting all my efforts to write it, and I expect to finish by the end of the year and it might be out near the end of 2011 or early 2012.

Richard S. Wheeler is the 2001 recipient of the Owen Wister Award for lifetime contributions to Western literature. He is a four-time Spur Award winner from Western Writers of America, and author of more than forty books.

If you have a book coming out you would like to write a piece about, feel free to email me.