Books in Brief: The Butte Polka

The Butte Polka, by Donald McCaig (Rawson, Wade, 276 pp., $10.95). Young Jimmy Mullholland, a miner’s son who has visions of getting away from the mines, is the narrator of this tale set in the copper-mining town of Butte, Montana in 1946. Jimmy’s Communist brother-in-law, Joel Kangas, has disappeared, and in order to satisfy his sister Kathleen, who does not believe her husband has simply taken off with another woman, Jimmy begins a search for Kangas that takes him through all the tawdry bars of this rough and ready town. Along the way he runs into the 1940s version of the liberated career woman, Butte’s only female reporter, and they share a few moments of warmth in this essentially grim tale set in a grim climate. As Jimmy searches Butte and the life of Joel Kangas to discover what has happened to him, various yarns concerning Butte’s citizens, both past and present, are recounted, some of them fairly bizarre. McCaig writes with raw vitality and gritty realism. You can feel the bleak ugliness of the company town in such terse descriptions as: “No front yard. Her house was drawn up close to the sidewalk. From the front porch you could see the tailing dump across the street.” McCaig details the miners’ life and the period of the Forties with undoubtable authenticity, but he gets somewhat carried away by the tiresome repetition of such details as “I brushed my teeth with Ipana” and “she smoked a Camel,” and he strives a little too hard for a macho effect. Nevertheless The Butte Polka still has the power to haunt as it winds to an inexorably tragic conclusion.

NH

About the Author

Norma B. Hawes

Featured Tags

The Butte Polka, by Donald McCaig (Rawson, Wade, 276 pp., $10.95). Young Jimmy Mullholland, a miner’s son who has visions of getting away from the mines, is the narrator of this tale set in the copper-mining town of Butte, Montana in 1946. Jimmy’s Communist brother-in-law, Joel Kangas, has disappeared, and in order to satisfy his sister Kathleen, who does not believe her husband has simply taken off with another woman, Jimmy begins a search for Kangas that takes him through all the tawdry bars of this rough and ready town. Along the way he runs into the 1940s version of the liberated career woman, Butte’s only female reporter, and they share a few moments of warmth in this essentially grim tale set in a grim climate. As Jimmy searches Butte and the life of Joel Kangas to discover what has happened to him, various yarns concerning Butte’s citizens, both past and present, are recounted, some of them fairly bizarre. McCaig writes with raw vitality and gritty realism. You can feel the bleak ugliness of the company town in such terse descriptions as: “No front yard. Her house was drawn up close to the sidewalk. From the front porch you could see the tailing dump across the street.” McCaig details the miners’ life and the period of the Forties with undoubtable authenticity, but he gets somewhat carried away by the tiresome repetition of such details as “I brushed my teeth with Ipana” and “she smoked a Camel,” and he strives a little too hard for a macho effect. Nevertheless The Butte Polka still has the power to haunt as it winds to an inexorably tragic conclusion.