THE BOY ORATOR

Novelist Daugherty (What Falls Away, 1996) takes us back to turn-of-the-century Oklahoma for a historical morality play about power and the creation of new societies. In later years, Harry Shaughnessy would have been called a Red-diaper baby. Although his pious mother Annie Mae was too Catholic to have much in the way of political convictions, his father Andrew became a Socialist and a labor organizer at an early age and raised his boy to believe more devoutly in the coming Triumph of the Working Man than most children believe in Santa Claus. So effective was Andrew’s influence on young Harry, in fact, that before he was even ten the boy became an accomplished orator, addressing socialist conventions and meeting-halls from one end of Oklahoma to other. A child at the podium was a good draw, as Andrew Shaughnessy knew—the novelty would supply the audience, and a boy could get away with saying more than the police and the mine owners would allow from a grown man. For decades, Oklahoma had been run by the mines more or less as one big company town, and now that statehood had been achieved, the authorities were tightening the screws even further. Like his heroes Eugene Debs and Big Bill Haywood, young Harry set out to let the man in the street know when he was getting the short end of the stick. But, like Debs, he underestimated the power of patriotism, eventually finding himself facing prison for refusing to serve in WWI. A good-hearted local politician tries to give Harry some advice: “The State’s changing, kid. Modernizing . . . Socialism has reached the end of its trail.” But Harry’s a true believer and, like all saints, destined for martyrdom. By the time it comes, it’s not much of a surprise. Hokey and pious, written with all the depth of a catechism and all the color of a tract.