Work Song

Ivan Doig

Nov 2010 · Recorded Books · Narrated by Jonathan Hogan

About this audiobook

National Book Award finalist and Wallace Stegner Award winner Ivan Doig has garnered critical and popular acclaim for his vibrant, authentic tales of the American West. In Work Song he takes listeners to Butte, Montana, in 1919 for the tale of one charmer’s efforts to elude Chicago gangsters.

Stepping off the train in the world’s copper mining capital, Morris Morgan secures a room at the boarding house of an attractive widow he’d like to know better. As the erudite Morris begins working at the local library, he tries not to take sides in the labor dispute at the Anaconda Mining Company. But when he’s mistaken for an undercover union operative, he’s soon caught up in the seething ferment of an iron-fisted company, radical union agitators, and beleaguered miners.

“More atmospheric, pleasingly old-fashioned storytelling from Doig, whose ear for the way people spoke and thought in times gone by is as faultless as ever.”—Kirkus Reviews

About the author

Ivan Doig was born in White Sulphur Springs, Montana in 1939. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in history from University of Washington. Before becoming an author, he worked as a ranch hand and a journalist. His non-fiction works include This House of Sky, Winter Brothers, and Heart Earth. His fiction titles include English Creek, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, Bucking the Sun, The Whistling Season, The Bartender's Tale, and Last Bus to Wisdom. He received several awards including the Western Literature Association's Lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award and the Wallace Stegner Award in 2007. He died of multiple myeloma on April 8, 2015 at the age of 75.