Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America

880 pp. Multiple Pulitzer Prize winner Lukas (Common Ground, LJ 1/86), who recently committed suicide at age 64, aspires in his final book to use the 1905 assassination of Frank Steunenberg, governor of Idaho, as a platform from which to survey the panorama of the turn-of-the-century's incessant labor strife. The murder, investigation, and trial quickly became a cause for business, labor, and law enforcement, both private and public. Lukas attempts to gather every thread of the events and actors' movements in the era's passionate, troubled labor history; he follows every digression and subplot and gives each character a minibiography. Given the fascinations of the subject and Lukas's skills as a wordsmith, individual segments of the book are most compelling indeed. As a whole, though, the maze of convolutions will discourage less-determined (and less-leisured) readers. The book nevertheless merits a place in academic collections.