"Fire and Brimstone"

The Frenchtown Branch (of Missoula Public Library) Book Discussion Group just finished discussing the book we read over the course of the month of May. The book, called Fire and Brimstone, was, we all agreed, a page turner. It was written by local writer/scholar Michael Punke and is a non-fiction account of the Butte mining disaster of 1917. Fire and Brimstone also discusses in a broader sense the social/economical/political climate of Butte around the time of the disaster.

Although I had some knowledge of Butte's tumultuous history before reading the book, I hadn't realized just how dramatic the events that took place in Butte during that time period were and how much they affected the nation at large. According to Punke, "...everything about Butte looms larger than life, magnified, exaggerated, like some gross caricature of itself. Butte's villain are more villainous, its heroes more heroic, its wealth more extravagant, its poverty more grinding. Butte's triumphs are the stuff of legends. Butte's tragedies are almost too painful to bear" (273-274). Here's' some especially interesting snippets I learned from Punke's book:

--In the late 1800's-early 1900's, William Clark, one of Butte's infamous "Copper Kings," spent 7 million dollars building a mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York with money he'd made in Butte (41).

--Former Montana Senator B.K. Wheeler, a man who "settled in Butte as a result of a losing poker hand" and who started his political career there as the federal district attorney for Montana, turned down the opportunity to run for Vice President on the same ticket as FDR in 1944 (73). Had he been FDR's running mate, it's likely that he would have ended up as the first and only president from Montana after the president died in 1945 (263-264).

--To establish the Berkeley Pit in 1955, 6,000 Butte homes were destroyed. Additionally, the Pit swallowed churches, cemeteries, and Columbia Gardens, a local amusement park. Today the inoperative Pit is filled with toxic turquoise water, water so poisonous that when a flock of snow geese made the mistake of landing there, they died. And, the scariest part about the Pit is that the level of that poisonous water is rising. If nothing is done about the rising water, analysts speculate that it will spill over the edge of the Pit around 2025 and flood the town and valley below. Drag. (269).

If the book sounds interesting to you, you can, of course, find copies at the Library. And if you're interested in checking out the Fire and Brimstone book club kit or another one of our book club kits, follow the MORE RESOURCES link on our home page to reach a link to a list of our available kits.

*Punke, Michael. Fire and Brimstone. New York: Hyperion, 2006.