Customer Reviews

God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana

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The best historical fiction is a labor of love and here author Carol Buchanan details a hidden history of her native Montana at a time when civil authority was noticeable only by its absence and decent people were struggling to survive. Set during the Civil War, the tensions between Confederate and Union veterans seeking gold complicate the basic problem of justice when a young man is murdered. Daniel Stark, a complicated man with problems of his own, finds himself drawn back into a discarded law career to act as a prosecutor in a murder trial while resisting a thunderbolt that strikes his own soul when he falls deeply in love with the wife of a friend. Stark's personal mission is to earn enough wealth to overcome the disgrace of his father's embezzlement and suicide and redeem his family's honor back in New York state.
To do that he has to not just find gold but survive the harsh conditions he faces. Those include not just Montana's winters, but the criminal element. joining with like-minded men, he turns Vigilante to re-establish the rule of law. This is, by turns, a Western, a legal thriller, a mystery and a love story all of which are anchored in the tale of a man's coming to terms with his own morality and character. It's a lot to get into one book, but it works.

This is one of the most interesting novels I have read lately. Buchanan has avoided the rookie trap of becoming hostage to her own research and the details
set the scene while not bogging the reader down in needless detail. The moral dilemmas drive the story as Stark and his love interest struggle against their own desires to do what is right and proper. She provides vivid characterization and dialog that makes this novel a real page-turner. The story line is rendered economically and logically. We hope to see more from this author in the future. Highly recommended

At first, or even a second glance this historical novel might appear to be a simple Western, an action-packed account of good guys versus bad guys and wild adventure on an even wilder frontier, as uncomplicated as old B-western movie. But it is a more subtle and complicated narrative, part court-room drama and police procedural, and a closely observed portrait of an isolated community, a community nearly as alien to Americans of the 21st century as something from another planet - Virginia City, Montana, during the last years of the Civil War. Virginia City is a mining camp, a temporary place of shacks and tents, tenuously connected to the greater world by a stage line and by men on horseback carrying messages. It is a dirty, brawling place, of mostly men, searching for gold in the rocky creek-beds, or prying it out of holes painstakingly grubbed in the ground, and taking their comforts where they can. But it is a community. Some of its residents are former soldiers, of the Union or the Confederacy, some have brought families; all have set aside their previous lives or professions in the quest for gold. They get along as best they can, each with their own memories and secrets to hide ... until the discovery of a dead body. The body is that of a young man, well-liked and popular in Virginia City - and it becomes clear that he was murdered. His shocked and grieving friends and kin begin looking into the circumstances of his death, thereby pulling the loose end of a string of coincidence that begins to unravel everything they thought they knew about each other.

That growing sense of horror is particularly well done, as men like Daniel Stark, a well-born young lawyer come to the mines to get enough gold to get his disgraced family out of debt, begin to realize that many of the robberies and murders that have occurred in and around Virginia City have been committed by an organized gang. The horror is compounded when Dan and his friends and colleagues pursuing justice realize that those perpetrating such depredations are well-liked, even trusted members of the community. It is a gripping and detailed read, the story of well-meaning men who respect the law, having to take their courage and their future in their own hands, at a time and in a place where there was no law, no means at all to protect life and property, other than what men and women of honor could do for themselves. The characters are efficiently drawn, but the sense of place is even more convincing. There is no way to mistake God's Thunderbolt for a B-western movie adventure - this vivid and carefully researched account made for someone who really wants to know what the Old West really looked like.

I read. I real alot and all genres. My favorite books are about people and events. This book by Mrs. Buchanan tells a historically acurate accounting of a time and place that is no more. And yet...the same issuses of yesterday are present today via this book. Some may label it a western. It is that too. But, in reality it is a politcally charged exploration of people, politics, crime and punishment.

Newspapers and tv editorials make hay out of the prison population in the USA today. What to do with the criminal eleminate? This book deals with today by looking at yesterday. The answers of yesterday are not for today.

But, if one goes beyond the story (which by the way is worth reading this book) it lets the reader explore todays issues with yesterdays examples.

Anyone who reads this book, will be looking for someone else who read it to discuss politics of that day as well as this day.

Written at the pace of a screenplay with the sinew of great literature, "God's Thunderbolt" is a story of resistance to the brutal regime that existed in the muddy, lawless ground of Alder Gulch in the Montana Territory of 1863. When efforts to obtain constitutional rights and protections for the territory failed, men of conscience knew their only option was to deal directly with the gang that ruled the lives of those who could only pray for benign influence and had tangible reason to fear malignant power.
Daniel Stark is a lawyer who has journeyed alone from New York to earn salvation for a family disgraced by debt and suicide. A vigilance group forms over the grave of an innocent murdered for his gold, and Dan's personal struggle begins over the letter of the law and the spirit of it. He has to rely on the letter of the law to prevent further wrongful deaths and the spirit of the law to impede the lawless. Either path calls for his personal sacrifice.
Carol Buchanan has given us a window on the grinding vulnerability of life in a mining camp. Award winning Richard S. Wheeler has called God's Thunderbolt `...one of the greatest historical novels set in Montana.' I humbly agree.

I was hooked from page one! Everything I want in a book, and more, unfolded as I continued. While not belaboring the hardships of a gold camp in the winter, Mrs Buchanan left me with clear pictures of the hard work of everyday life. Not a life for the faint of heart! The characters became real people, good and bad. The research into historical fact was well worked into a character study, a mystery, a love story and enough action to satisfy any reader.

This is a wonderful historical western. The hero is a principled man who turned from being a lawyer to become a surveyor because he liked to live and work out-of-doors. Dan Stark is a surveyor in Montana Territory's Alder Gulch. He has left his home in New York with memories of his lawyer father's suicide after he gambled away the family's money and that of many of his clients. His promise to his grandfather is to earn, discover and bring back enough gold to pay the debts incurred by his father and hopefully redeem some of the family honor.

It is 1863 in Virginia City and the middle of a brutal winter. It's not just the weather that bothers Dan but the political leanings of the miners. Emotions run high among the miners, many of whom sympathize with the south while Dan is an abolitionist. Some of the residents have served in the Civil War which is in its final years. There is little or no law in Virginia City except by the smoking end of a gun. Always, Dan carries his rifle on his shoulder.

The author spins out the drama of poker games played with deadly intent and encounters that are fraught with tension and terror. As the drama builds, Dan wonders how much his life is worth. When a well-liked young man is murdered for his gold and mules he joins those searching for the killer. They suspect that the murderer is a wealthy rancher who the murdered man's foster father believes is a friend. Dan grits his teeth, now knowing how the man became wealthy.

Arrested at last, the suspected murderer is brought to trial which takes place in open air. Dan finds himself and two other lawyers defending a man whose "friends" intimidate and threaten witnesses and and the general public. The trial spins to a tension filled climax when the man is convicted and hanged immediately so that the jury will not change its mind. It is at this point that the law-abiding citizens realize that there is a conspiracy group threatening, robbing and murdering the citizens of the area. A vigilante group is formed and the search begins for those who belong to the gang responsible for so much terror and fear.

As the book races to its conclusion, the reader finds Dan drawn ever closer to a local woman whose principles coincide with his own. Dan realizes that he is in love with another man's wife - an impossible situation at best. This is an excellent book written by a Montana native who tells it like it must have been. Well researched and well written and the author has written a sequel for us to enjoy, too.

This is a book that will grab the reader from the very first couple of pages and continue holding your interest till the end. I'm a native fifth-generation Montanan and found this book to take me back on those forelorn, dirt roads around Virginia City, Nevada City and the little ghost towns of early Montana. Characters are believable and the book takes one back to the hardships these people had to deal with on a daily basis. It is an enjoyable read with very descriptive use of language and a bit of history also!

The Civil War still raged across much of the country but in eastern Montana another war, one between good and evil, was about to break out. In her book, God's Thunderbolt, Carol Buchanan tells the riveting story of the aftermath of a gold discovery along Alder Gulch in eastern Montana and of the boom towns like Nevada City and Virginia City that grew quickly because of that gold.

Men poured in, many loyal to the south, others to the north, but some were members of a gang of ruthless killers who robbed and murdered across the countryside with impunity. Atop this web of lawlessness Buchanan weaves an intriguing story of an honest man, a New York lawyer, who is drawn into vigilante justice to clean the land of this evil gang even while he is falling in love with the wife of a roughneck who may well be one the killers he will have to hang.

Buchanan's characters come across with a stark realism while the deadly cold of a brutal Montana winter virtually shivers from the page. God's Thunderbolt is an exciting tale steeped in history and well worth the read.