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Four young Irish immigrants seek their fortunes in Denver, Colorado, filled with enthusiasm and dreams for their new futures. Emmett Kelly, the titular butcher, has meat-packinghouse experience in Chicago and longs to open his own butcher shop or grocery store. He may be considered the lead protagonist because the novel opens and closes with his predicaments, but the story is truly not Kelly’s alone. He becomes acquainted with Thomas Quinn on the train to Denver, a young carpenter who is quieter and much less brash. The young men soon find a wealth of job opportunities and female companionship in the rapidly growing city. Despite the era’s restrictions for women of all ages, Alice Butler and Maggie Sullivan are high-spirited young ladies with viable dreams of their own. More interested in romance than in making a headlong rush toward marriage and motherhood, they’re inclined to seek both adventure and respectability in their new environment.
Tierney’s historical tale is well-researched and engaging. The clear writing, good pacing, and extensive character and plot development make this an enlightening and enduring read. One will become quickly invested in the characters, learning much that is factual about the lives of Irish migrants in the US at the turn of the twentieth century. Also explored are broader historical events such as the influenza epidemic during World War I, the problems encountered in early industrialization, such as long hours and mind-numbing, low-paying, repetitive factory jobs that working-class women often filled, and the struggles of laborers who were forced to wrangle with wealthy business owners for better working conditions and the union wages they deserved. While there is a notable supporting cast in the story beyond these four protagonists, it is the focus on this pair of friends who become married couples that drive much of the plot.
When the couples’ lives become marred due to a serious, debilitating ethical clash between Kelly and Quinn, the author handles the transitions with ease as the wives’ experiences begin to eclipse the original emphasis on their husbands. In a sense, this growing emphasis in the second half of the novel leaves the book’s title in the dust as the story transitions to the plights and successes of the immigrant women who strive to establish equal rights by utilizing their talents to achieve financial stability for themselves and their children. It seems that then, as now, it is often strong women who must pick up the pieces and restore order and community when life begins to falter and tensions overcome stability. Tierney, with his extensive life experience as an eminent educator and nonfiction author, handles equally well the complexities and life trajectories of his fictional female and male characters and understands well the historical and societal pressures that both face. In this sense, the novel has strong feminist themes with some spicy romance that will surely interest discerning new adult readers of both genders. Love and loss, tragedy and triumph, and the juxtaposition of many other dualities found in the lives of ordinary people and families elevate this ordinariness to an extraordinary read.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review