It seems to be a season of historical fiction for me: the latest to cross my path is set in the early 1900s, in Colorado.
At 17, Sylvie Pelletier is the oldest child of a Quebecois family, whose father Jacques works in the marble quarry near Ruby, Colorado. In April 1907 Sylvie, her two brothers (one just a baby), and her mother have finally come to join him after two years apart.
We left Ruby with cold sun dazzling off the snow-covered land, the mercury twenty degrees [Fahrenheit — this was before Canada switched to Celsius], and headed for a mule trail no wider than a string of gristle. The road led through quiet skeleton woods studded green with pines, then out again through clearings, a cirque of open range. The horses drudged up a slow grade and the cold froze our nostrils together on the inhale. We pulled our mufflers up and gazed at the fearsome towering peaks all around.
At the other end is no Eden, but the ‘town’ of Moonstone, a bitterly cold camp of huts made of boards nailed with tacks, chinks stopped with newspaper.
Sylvie’s mother is determined that the children should have schooling, so they plod or hitch rides down to school each day. An essay brings Sylvie a prize, to be published in the local paper, and its editor KT Redmond, offers Sylvie a job. Ms Redmond is a firebrand editor, writing blistering articles about the plight of the quarry workers and the injustices in their treatment, and encouraging them to strike.
Nearby is Elkhorne Manor, belonging to the quarry owner, Duke Padgett. Sylvie is naive enough to believe that he is a real Duke, and that his Belgian wife is a Countess. Offered a job as a secretary in the Padgett household, Sylvie jumps at it, and finds herself in a world of unimaginable luxury. The Manor has 47 rooms, its kitchen with a
hearth so big I could stand in it and cook myself, cupboards and glass-front cabinets of white china, a porcelain sink…’
Meanwhile, in the quarry, the workers live brutal lives. Every second is counted, although they are often expected to work overtime for no pay. Lunch break is fifteen minutes only. They are paid in scrip which can be used only in the company store. If they get injured on the job, they are promptly fired with no compensation. They are charged rent for the miserable shacks they live in.
The ‘Countess’ has a superficially kind heart, and has visions of building schools and hospitals for the workers, but little strength of character to see such projects through. Instead, she plays Lady Bountiful, asking Sylvie probing questions about the hygiene levels of the worker families, or travelling among them distributing candy when what they need is shoes, clothes, food.
The last Padgett is young Jasper, or JC, with whom Sylvie falls instantly in love. She meets George Lonahan, a labor organizer, who likewise makes her heart flutter. It doesn’t seem much of a spoiler to say that Sylvie’s relationships bounce between the two men for the rest of the novel.
Historical novels are based on research, and the lives of white people are typically documented much more extensively in the newspapers, books and other sources that form the basis of that research. Thus, many such novels focus entirely on the white settlers, as if the Native Americans, black families, and Chinese railroad workers did not exist. Manning, however, does more — good for her! Early in the novel, Sylvie is told about the Utes who were killed and disposessed by the whites.
At the time I thought it was just a legend. But all these years since, I’ve wondered if the disasters that befell Moonstone were due to the Ute curse, Chief Colorow’s prophecy, that any venture attempted by white people in the Diamond River Valley was doomed.
The Utes live in this novel only as legend, but it is set a mere 40 years after the Civil War: black people are supposedly free, but discrimination and worse are slow to vanish. The butler/driver and the estate cook are a married black couple, the Gradys (“I had never met a Negro before”), with two grown-up sons that they dote on. Despite their apparent placidity, a deep anger simmers within the Grady family, and their feelings and actions are given attention throughout the book.
Her Quebec/Vermont origins make Sylvie an outsider, and Kate Manning does a nice job of showing her reactions, formed by her background as much as her age and naivety.
I [Sylvie] studied [Millie’s] bright American expression.
Did I want to be a newshound? The idea had not occurred to me as among the possibilities, which seemed limited to nun, wife, spinster.
So far, so good, a coming-of-age story set among the high quarries and the workers’ struggle to unionize. The book goes on, though, through Sylvie’s life, year after year, through her poor decisions and just-in-time avoidance of really bad decisions, through her hopeless love for the hapless dilettante Jasper Padgett, through marriage and motherhood and widowhood, which was somewhat further than I cared to know about Sylvie.
A welcome spark is provided by the appearance of the real-life Mother Jones, the astonishing community organizer who was once called ‘the most dangerous woman in America’.
“My address is like my shoes. It travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong.”
― Mother Jones
A major subplot is about the evil King Leopold of Belgium, a visitor and prospective investor in the Colorado mines; though true in that he really did visit Colorado in 1905, the plot lacked subtlety, and could have been skipped, I thought.
An interesting piece of well-written historical fiction, but it would have been more impressive as a tighter, shorter novel.
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