"The Boy Orator is a classic American character. Mark Twain would love him. So do I."—Marshall Terry

The Boy Orator A Novel by Tracy Daugherty

In Tracy Daugherty's third novel, childhood innocence and political ambition meet just prior to the First World War in the person of Harry Shaughnessy, an Oklahoma farmer' son. Gifted with a booming speaking voice and a charismatic presence, the boy learns the socialist credo from his father, who takes him on the road—from laborers' camps to county fairs to Oklahoma City—to spread the people's gospel to farmers, miners, and oil workers. Along the way young Harry encounters other socialist crusaders—Eugene V. Debs, Oscar Ameringer, and the dynamic red-haired feminist Kate O'Hare.

Daugherty seamlessly integrates these historical figures into the compelling fictionalized tale of his own real-life grandfather's idealistic struggle for American workers and of his inevitable disillusionment with the defeat of the socialist cause. With an apt and unobtrusive use of the details of another era, Daugherty creates historical images as vivid as contemporary television images of Oklahoma City rescue workers cradling wounded children outside the bomb-devastated Murrah building.

Praise for The Woman in the Oil Field (SMU, 1996)

"There is an endearing honesty about these characters. . . . Daugherty's work [is] distinctive and persuasive."—New York Times Book Review

TRACY DAUGHERTY is the author of two other critically acclaimed novels and a story collection, The Woman in the Oil Field. He grew up in Midland, Texas, and now teaches English at Oregon State University.

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The Boy Orator
ISBN 0-87074-433-X
$19.95

6x9. 240 pp.
Fiction. History of Socialism. Oklahoma History.

Publication Date: October 1998.

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