Volume 44, Number 16 · October 23, 1997
Terror in a Small Town
By Garry Wills
Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America
by J. Anthony Lukas
Simon and Schuster, 875 pp., $32.50
We begin with the sleepy quotidian rhythms of Caldwell, a small town in Idaho. It is afternoon, December 30, 1905. We follow a prominent citizen—ex-governor, owner of the town newspaper—named Frank Steunenberg. Having said, somewhat uncomfortably, a prayer with his fervent wife (a Seventh-Day Adventist), Steunenberg strolls off to his familiar spots. He is treated deferentially, but he makes these rounds too regularly to excite much notice. After thirty-five pages of leisurely description of the town, we get back with Steunenberg to his house, watch him open the gate to his yard, and hear his lower body being blown away by the explosives rigged to the gate.
Review, 2104 words
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