AMERICAN PIED PIPER

Foster’s sprawling historical novel concludes a trilogy about a small town in Middle America.

The author continues his story of Beardstown, Illinois, from one end of the 20th century to the other. In 1906, a fortuitous connection with a railroad executive leads 20-year-old Sam Clark to leave rural Missouri for Beardstown, where he trains as an engineer while also pursuing his passion for bird hunting. Sam marries Dora Adler, the daughter of a local tailor, and becomes close friends with Lloyd McHugh, scion of a prominent family. (Readers of previous volumes will recognize some familiar players and their descendants.) With Lloyd’s help, Sam turns a former brothel into a hunting lodge and divides his time between driving a train and working as a hunting guide, figuring out how to keep an alcohol-dependent business profitable during Prohibition and raising a family. As Sam moves into middle age, the narrative shifts to the McHughs, particularly Lloyd’s son Milt, who heads to Yale University in 1933, and then goes to law school before returning to Beardstown, ready to take over from his father as state’s attorney. Milt’s determination to stamp out vice and petty crime puts him at odds with friends and neighbors. In the century’s final decades, an investing club of local women becomes a national sensation; when the Beardstown Ladies run into trouble, Milt’s hard-won experience offers a way for him to find redemption. Overall, this book serves as a generally satisfying conclusion to the trilogy; it effectively manages to balance historical fact with the inner lives of imagined characters in a highly readable and engaging narrative. Foster touches on many of the notable moments of the 20th century, incorporating labor unrest, World Wars, and natural disasters seamlessly. However, this volume noticeably lacks major characters of color; the first book, by contrast, featured well-developed Indigenous characters. However, this book skillfully explores themes of individuality and collective identity, offering readers multiple perspectives on how best to make a community thrive.

A solid final volume about the denizens of an Illinois River town.