The family made their way down to the lake as the classic aircraft taxied to the dock. Thorn cut the power and let the flying boat drift toward his welcoming committee, waiting with bumpers and lines to secure the amphibious plane. When the plane’s door opened, Thorn’s contagious smile won the crowd.
“Hey, Dad!” Annika shouted.
“Hello, my dear. Good evening, everyone.”
Thorn hopped down onto the dock extension built to accommodate his flying yacht, whiskey bottle in hand; he hadn’t lost his politician’s flair for the dramatic. Annika ran to him, and he lifted her off her feet. She might be the president of his multibillion-dollar empire but, in his eyes, she’d always be his little girl.
He hugged his son-in-law warmly, and greeted each member of the entourage with the same genuine warmth. He said something in Caroline’s ear that made her giggle before embracing her husband in a bear hug. He handed Jonathan the whiskey bottle and turned toward the former navy man. Reece had only met Thorn a handful of times and had not spent much time with him.
“Great to see you again, James. I’m glad to hear that your health is on the mend.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Let’s get that bottle open before Jonathan gets the shakes, shall we?”
“Lead the way,” Jonathan retorted as the extended family walked together toward the house.
Tim Thornton was one of five children of Irish immigrant parents, born and raised in Butte, Montana, during the baby boom of the 1940s. Known as “Ireland’s Fifth Province,” Butte had boasted the highest percentage of Irish residents in America at one point, exceeding even that of Boston. Thorn’s dad, like most of his former countrymen, was a miner who toiled long hours in the nearby copper mines in order to provide for his family. His father would come home from a shift looking like a stone statue, so covered in dirt and dust that his son could not even recognize him. Thorn would see the “copper sores” on his father’s forearms after he’d scrubbed the grime from his body. His parents rode him and his siblings hard, determined that academics would lead them away from the mines and to a better life. If he stayed in Butte, he’d be lucky to land a job as a machinist or boilermaker. If he was unlucky, as most were, he would find himself a mile underground, digging out copper to feed the electronics market.
The hard work paid off when Thorn won an appointment to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. He struggled in the institution’s tough regimen of engineering and mathematics but thrived on the boxing team, where he quickly earned the respect of the upper classmen. He graduated in 1967, when the Vietnam War was in full swing. The safer choice would have been to head to the navy’s surface fleet, riding out the war on an aircraft carrier or destroyer with clean sheets and hot food. Instead, he volunteered for the Marine Corps. He served as an infantry platoon commander in the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines and was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart for his actions during Operation Kentucky.
Thorn left the Marine Corps in 1971 and entered law school at the University of Montana in Missoula. During his first year he lost his father to lung cancer, no doubt from a lifetime of exposure to the dust in the mines, but his grief was tempered by meeting the love of his life. Kathy Roberts was a graduate student in the university’s geology department and, like Thorn, had family roots in Ireland. Their courtship was a brief one and they were married at Saint Anthony’s in Missoula before Thorn had taken his final exams. The couple eventually moved back to Butte, Kathy doing fieldwork while Thorn studied for the bar exam. He passed the bar and found work in a local firm, doing everything from wills and real estate closings to defending local miners who’d been arrested for petty crimes.
Thorn found success in law, thanks to a strong work ethic and his ability to connect with clients. He began to see that Montana was being stripped of its natural resources on the backs of men like his father and that the lucrative proceeds were flowing toward corporations in New York and San Francisco. It was a complicated situation and, when he was approached by local civic leaders to run for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat, he saw a way to do something about it. The native