THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 23, 1997 TAG: 9702180454
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY ROGER K. MILLER
LENGTH: 75 lines
DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN
THOMAS MALLON
Pantheon. 355 pp. $24.
One of the most difficult things for a writer to achieve in a work of historical fiction, especially one with literary rather than blood-and-thunder aspirations, is a believable sense of the times. How do you stick in all of that research you've done without having it stick out like a fistful of sore thumbs?
For a good textbook (so to speak) example of how it's done, see Thomas Mallon's Dewey Defeats Truman, a novel covering just over five months (June to November 1948) in the life of the townspeople of Owosso, Mich.
The buildup and blending in of historical detail are expertly handled. Sometimes, if you're looking for it, you can sense that the author slid something in - such as the marketing of the new Polaroid camera - simply because he thought it would go well there, but for the most part, his creation of the historical setting is deftly done.
Perhaps this is because Mallon is growing expert at it. His previous novel, Henry and Clara, was historical fiction about the couple who were with Lincoln the night he was assassinated. Or perhaps it's because he has such an affection for his subject. As he draws it, Owosso, Mich., in 1948 is a place mostly of dear hearts and gentle people, though the hearts occasionally are broken and the people are sorely troubled.
It is also a place of great excitement and anticipation, because Owosso is the birthplace of Republican presidential nominee Thomas E. Dewey. The gentle people of Owosso, like the American electorate in general, know in their bones that their hometown boy will be the walkaway winner of the November election. Many of them are preparing not only to celebrate this happy certainty, but to capitalize on it. (The title derives, of course, from the famously mistaken headline in an early edition of the Nov. 3, 1948, Chicago Tribune.)
Chiefly, however, the novel is a love story - or, rather, a series of love stories. Or, more accurately still, a story about love. Some of these stories reflect each other, just as certain fictional events and characters mirror national events and personages.
There are two love triangles. Republican state senate nominee Peter Cox loves bookstore clerk Anne Macmurray, who loves labor organizer Jack Riley, who loves Anne in return and despises Peter's politics. High schooler Billy Grimes loves Margaret Feller, who loves Tim Herrick, who loves Margaret in return and is Billy's best friend.
Like these triangles, other love stories, past and present, show a yearning for the security and satisfaction of a genuine love. Spanish-American War veteran Horace Sinclair's remembrance of his long, happy life with his late wife does this. So, oddly, does the divorce of Peter's mother from a husband who long ago ceased to mean anything to her, and vice versa.
``I am 59 years old,'' she tells her son, ``and I want to be happy.''
Billy and Peter, who resemble each other in many ways, are also, in Mallon's eyes, versions of Dewey writ small. Billy, a youthful go-getter who lives by Dale Carnegie principles, is utterly conventional and slightly preposterous. Peter is like Dewey in his calm assumption that he will be elected - indeed, as a Republican ought to be elected.
In all of this the author reveals himself to be on the side of the angels - which is to say, his two lovebirds, Anne and Jack, and the handful of others in town who support Harry Truman and believe that his expected loss will be a great misfortune for the country.
Come the end, Owosso and the country get quite a surprise. And so do the readers. If initially you feel a bit betrayed, you'll probably conclude that the outcome, like that of the election, is really better for all concerned. MEMO: Roger K. Miller, former book editor at The Milwaukee Journal, is a
free-lance writer in Lopez, Pa. ILLUSTRATION: File Photo
Truman was thrilled to thwart expectations by winning the
election... For complete copy, see microfilm