Marble Creek
Karen Charbonneau
Author Bio
I’m fascinated by seemingly unimportant bits of history that changed the future in unforeseen ways. Marble Creek is my third historical novel, The Wolf’s Sun and A Devil Singing Small are available on Amazon.
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, 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.
Description
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 in 1916, Pinkerton detective Robert Jamieson is later caught up in the Everett, Washington, Massacre while infiltrating the Industrial Workers of the World – the Wobbles. 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 scheme to transport guns 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 character-driven story is set in the fomenting unrest of the Pacific Northwest during World War I where 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.
Book excerpt
Until tonight Robert Jamieson had never been shot. Shot at, but never hit. Run! Get away from the docks! Can they see me?
He was crouched over a dying Billy Sewell when the bullet smacked into his shoulder. His revolver dropped from a numb hand and he ran like a creased deer. Odds got Billy. Not me. Rain pelted his face and he snorted wet air, stifling groans that would alert his pursuers.
The jolt of energy that got him away was ebbing. Blood ran into the gloved hand cradling his useless arm and each muffled step failed to raise Seattle’s lights above warehouse ridgelines.
Intermittent shouts passed between the shooter and another man. He hadn’t shaken them. If he could control his sobbing breath, he might have a chance, but light tarred wood and brick structures squatting one above the other, and every sluggish footfall seemed to drag along a paving brick. He wanted to drop and curl up like a dying dog. Won’t make it to the lights. Gotta find a hole!
Sensing an open space, he lurched into it – a fuel yard set back from the street. Thrusting his left arm toward the dim wall of a shed, he slammed into something soft . . . someone. They had him!
A woman’s gasp, the scent of cheap perfume and exhaled booze. She’ll scream. They’ll hear. Pinning her against the shed with his chest and thigh, Jamieson slapped his bloody gloved hand over her mouth and nose. She struggled, taller and stronger than he could easily handle. He grunted, “Not gonna hurt ya.” Streetwalker? Whore? He knew whores. “Quiet! They shot me.” He pressed his fingers harder against her face. “You scream an’ they’ll find me.”
A sharp pain pierced his thigh as she shoved him away. His wounded shoulder hit the shed and he fell with a groan.
* *
Addie MacLean was lost. Dark alleyways had lured her into a maze of warehouses beyond the ferry docks. Now she turned up a brick-paved street, confident the steep climb would lead her away from the smell of decaying fish and water-slapped wharves, toward city center and the streetcar to her boarding house. Ships’ lanterns glimmered out on Puget Sound before another band of rain swept in. A gunshot came from the docks below.
Hugging the safety of a brick building, she waited. Then a second shot and her heart pounded. Moments passed and then a third shot. Far below a man called out, “This way,” but even closer, uneven padding was heading uphill toward her. Her wet dancing pumps threatened to leave her barefoot as she fled up the incline, grabbing at brickwork. She reached the corner of a building, and edged along it into an open lot. Mud oozed over her ankles. The faint outline of a storage shed drew her until she touched rough wood and smelled sulfur. Coal. Just before the man careened into her, Addie plucked a hat pin from her tam.
Author Website
http://lettersfromshenaniganvalleyidaho.blogspot.com/