The Richest Hill on Earth: A Novel

In this captivating historical novel six-time Spur Award winner Richard S. Wheeler turns his storytellers eye to a clash of towering ambitions in the American West when the Copper Kings of Butte Montana wrestled each other for control of both the "richest hill on earth" and Montanas fledgling government. The city of Butte looks like a cancerous mlange of smoky mine boilers and rudely constructed sheds when newspaperman John Fellowes Hall arrives on a cold spring day in 1892. Butte may be ugly but its the place to get rich. Its also a city full of storiesperfect for a journalist looking to make a name for himself. As an employee of mining titan William Andrews Clark Hall becomes a part of the best story of them all: the fight among the Copper Kings. Buttes three founding fathers were remarkable men with little in common other than ambition. Marcus Daly a humble Irish immigrant led the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. His political rival the formidable William Andrews Clark a brilliant but vain businessman bought himself a United States Senate seat. And Augustus Heinze tried to steal the mines using lawyers and bribed judges only to be crushed by the Rockefellers. The Richest Hill on Earth captures their struggle as well as the stories of the ordinary peoplethe miners their wives and children the journalists and even the psychicstrying to make their fortunes in the rapidly changing West. The Richest Hill of Earth is a Kirkus Reviews Best of 2011 Historical Fiction title.