Framework of a Family

The surprise death of Marija and Gus, Tony Duggan’s maternal grandparents, brings Tony to a moment of personal introspection. “This last week’s been pure hell,” he laments.


Tony, a flawed man, grew up in the shadow of a rock-solid triangle of steel—the Leonard Mine. Beneath that triangle—the gallus frame—the shape of every Butte residents’ life was determined.


When Tony inherits the premier night spot in what has been called the Richest Hill on Earth, he is hurled into personal wealth and power overnight. Designated Head of the Family in his grandparent’s will, he is expected to be as strong as a gallus frame—holding his family together. Even before he had time to move into the mansion that came as part of the package, Meg, an unknown beautiful young woman, is in his office with a bombshell of a problem.


Tony’s diverse family includes a cast of winners and losers who keep Tony busy being the family Patriarch. Feuding uncles—one the Miners Union boss, the other head of billion dollar entity everyone calls The Company. His drunk of a mother and another uncle, T.J., a Catholic priest. And a variety of progeny


Tony immediately deals with Meg and her son Mike, the boy he adopts in his heart. 


In the process, Meg and Tony’s wife Nancy combine forces and open what turns out to be a roaring success—Tyler’s—a woman’s dress shop, a business that frees both women—in different ways. And complicates Tony’s life.


Mike, Vince and Shirley soon fill the pages of Tony’s life with their own sagas.


His own children, Vince and Shirley, do not fit the mold he has envisioned for them. Vince follows his baseball dream to Boston where he meets mysterious Catherine LaFornaise. Shirley and Butte friend Mandy McGuire find themselves involved in the Miner’s Union strike of 1959, each in feminist pursuits that grate on Tony’s old-fashioned values. Pursuits that have lasting consequences in everyone’s lives.


Meanwhile, Meg and her son Mike have interwoven their lives with Tony’s, sometimes creating problems. Mike, while pursuing his biological father, finds himself involved in intrigue as he enters the world of movie starlets and rock stars in the heart of L.A. and Las Vegas.


But throughout it all, Tony is the center of everyone’s life. Sometimes he feels like Solomon. Personally, he second-guesses past choices as loneliness and arthritis conspire to make him regret some of his own personal decisions.


Then, when Butte’s magnet pulls Tony’s children back, his life is forever changed.