drkottke 's review for:

The Women of the Copper Country by Mary Doria Russell

5.0

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The perfect complement to "Grown-Up Anger," Russell does a superior (no pun intended) job of conjuring the world of the Keewenaw copper mining industry in 1913 and situating the labor unrest that culminated in the Christmas Eve Italian Hall massacre with the lived experience of a broad cast of characters. Like "Ragtime" and "The Road to Wellville," historical figures and fictional characters commingle throughout the narrative seamlessly. I'd only read Russell's science fiction before this, and the world-building talent she employed in crafting the future and alien worlds of "The Sparrow" serve the past just as effectively. Word to Audible listeners: the narrator makes some critical pronunciation errors that a little research would have fixed easily (e.g., Houghton and pasties are sadly mispronounced).