Timothy Egan is an important Western writer. Not a writer of Westerns, but a Western writer. He documents forgotten stories of the American West, with a particular emphasis on the Northwest. Among his more important works are The Worst Hard Time (which departs from his usual northwestern setting and focuses on the people in the plains states during the Dust Bowl), Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, and my personal favorite, The Big Burn, which opens with twenty of the most compelling pages of prose I've read in the past several years. When he's at his best, both in style and in choice of subject, he's one of the greatest non-fiction writers out there; when his subject is less interesting or his style a little less developed--as I felt during the first half of Breaking Blue, only his second book--he's still one of the best non-fiction writers out there.Breaking Blue tells the story of a police cover-up in the town of Spokane, a 1935 cop-killing in which the murderer is another cop--a corrupt, brutal, but larger-than-life character named Clyde Ralstin, who shoots a marshal named George Conniff while participating in a burglary of a creamery. That's right: Ralstin was a moonlighting as a butter thief. And while it may seem hard at first to take seriously the subject of Depression era butter-burglary gangs--as thievery goes, it ain't exactly the Lufthansa Heist or a Wall Street hedge fund--the death of Conniff was a heinous crime that demanded justice--and received none. Clyde Ralstin had too much dirt on too many people in Spokane, and if he were to fall, he would take them with him.It is fifty-four years before Anthony Bamonte, a nearby sheriff working on a master's thesis on the history of law enforcement in eastern Washington, rediscovers the case and begins asking some uncomfortable and impertinent questions of the Spokane police department, which still seems intent on covering up the obvious guilt of one of their own. I found this aspect of the story--Bamonte's persistence in the face of stonewalling, attacks on him in the press, and the outright refusal of Spokane PD to cooperate in his investigation--to be the best part of reading Breaking Blue. To put it simply, it took me several days to read the first 100 rather ho-hum pages, but only a day to read the last 150. Such is the power, I think, of people's desire to see justice done. When the narrative reaches this point, I found myself furiously gobbling up pages, eager to see the sonofabitch Ralstin--who is, Bamonte discovers deep into his investigation, still alive--punished for his crime. Along the way, Bamonte faces the stiff resistance of Ralstin's fellow citizens in a small Montana town, who regard him as a heroic figure who, even if guilty, deserves to live out his few remaining days in peace. But Bamonte is driven on by his own conscience (he considers himself "the voice of the dead") and by Conniff's orphaned children, also advanced in age, who wish to see justice done for the murder of their beloved father.Cold-Case Files could do a two-hour special on this one, but it would fail to achieve the level of pathos Egan touches here. His stories are always rooted in the land, in this case the spoiled and defoliated region around the Spokane and Pend Oreille rivers, waterways which once supported whole civilizations with their now-extinct salmon runs. Egan understands that the stories that come out of the American West are the product of greed, rapaciousness, and--as Bamonte's own life suggests--rampant loneliness. It is a vision of the West that is a far cry from the triumphalist Manifest Destiny cliches that inform our usual view.
I think it speaks well of a book when it produces an emotional reaction in the reader. Reading this book made me angry.On Sept. 14, 1935, a gang of thieves breaks into a creamery in Pend Oreille County, Wash., to steal butter and other dairy commodities that were valuable on the black market during the Depression. A town marshal named George Conniff intervenes and is murdered.The case goes unsolved until 1989, when Pend Oreille County's against-the-grain sheriff, Tony Bamonte, comes across it while working on his master's thesis. Feeling that an injustice has been done. Bamonte reopens the case, and his investigation leads him to uncover outrageous corruption in the Spokane (Wash.) Police Department of the 1930s. Even the Spokane Police Department of 1989 isn't thrilled about Bamonte's queries. The reason: The prime suspect was, in 1935, a Spokane police officer.Ridiculed for probing a crime fifty-plus years later, Bamonte has three good reasons for his persistence: Conniff's three children, still alive, still seeking closure.Timothy Egan's "Breaking Blue" is as much a profile of the tortured, stubborn Sheriff Bamonte as it is a true-crime story. Although Bamonte is the hero of the book, he's a flawed hero, and Egan is unsparing when it comes to those flaws. As admirable as his pursuit of truth and justice is, it comes at the expense of his family.I'm not much into the true-crime genre, but I chose to read "Breaking Blue" because I really liked two later books by Egan. "Breaking Blue" shares in common with them meticulous research and reporting. It allows Egan to make us feel as if we are there in that creamery in 1935, and as if we are there with Bamonte as he labors alone on his thesis and as he tries to make headway with defenders of his prime suspect. Egan is careful to give us ample background so that we understand, for example, the reasons for robbing a creamery in the 1930s, and the workings of the Spokane police during that era. Because of this, the book seems to move a bit slowly in the early going. As I read the final chapters last night, though, it was almost in the can't-put-it-down category.
What do You think about Breaking Blue (2004)?
I liked the history, I disliked the personal story of Tony Bamonte.Spokane was a cesspit of killing, robbery, and corruption from the time white men first arrived in the neighborhood, about 1811. Now I don't know exactly what was going on when only the Indians lived there, but they did manage to live there for thousands of years without destroying the land. When white men arrived, well never mind reasonable behavior. Logging, killing Indians including those trying to surrender, killing 800 horses belonging to the Indians, mining, bootlegging, whoring, wife beating, and a totally corrupt police force. In 1935 someone is robbing creameries for butter and cream to sell on the black market. Remember this is depression and dust bowl era, lots of very hungry people and people out of work. A marshal working security in the town where one of the creameries is located is shot dead by the thieves. But who were the thieves, who was the murderer? Police don't tell on police so the murderer is not caught.In rides Sheriff Tony Bamonte, in 1989, figuratively wearing a white hat. Mr. good guy. He fights for right He fights the logging corporations, the justice department, the forest service. Kind of this lone cowboy sheriff. He decides to solve this crime. No one likes him for it except the family of the marshal who died 54 years ago in the robbery.Tony Bamonte is also kind of a messed up person in his own esteem, which he keeps telling us about, his father was cold, his mother was a slut. He doesn't forgive his mother or stop trying to find some trace of love in the years his father had lived. Sadly, despite his heroic work in solving this crime, he seems incapable of not repeating his parents mistakes with his own family.
—Chana
Heading out to Eastern Washington or Montana? Take this book with you.It's our good fortune that journalist Timothy Egan is obsessed with the Depression era. To think that times were so dire, the unraveling of society so great that a bully cop could murder another cop and get away with it for 40+ years is astounding. The inside view of a corrupt police force explains why my parents of the 60s held a very low opinion of police officers and this opinion continues to this day in communities which are preyed upon by criminals in uniform. (Egan does take pains to point out that it is the dirty, bully cops who give all police officers a bad name, and of course the protagonist is a Sheriff motivated by a higher calling.)It's such a pleasure to read a non-fiction mystery that verges on a thriller with literary flair. Being from this part of the world, the Pacific Northwest history as well as natural history of Spokane area and Flathead Lake, Montana are especially enjoyable.Why isn't this an HBO Special or a movie? Maybe it's difficult to have actors move between the '30s and the 80s? Or maybe the Spokane Tourism Board did not like Egan's depiction of the Spokane police force.
—Kelly
Read this one aloud with Tristan, we just got back from Spokane and this book definitely immersed me in the place. Wish we had more time to explore the Pend Oreille and Metaline Falls, but it was pretty thrilling to see old creamery signs faded into brick buildings in downtown Spokane and wonder, "Was that one of the creameries that was robbed?" or to cross the Post Street bridge where the gun was tossed.Great for true crime fans, people interested in NW history or the Depression. My mind is still filled with an image of the Mother's Kitchen dinner late at night, filled with bootleggers, small time cons and Spokane cops sitting shoulder to shoulder swapping stories at a time when wearing the blue uniform meant you were above the law.
—Carmine
