A Slovenian peasant boy leaves the family farm in Austria in 1903, goes off to the big city to study music, becomes a concert bassoonist and is performing with the opera in Paris when the First World War starts. He is behind enemy lines. He must flee. The smelter band in East Helena needs a bandleader and off he goes. He was Tony Leskovar, one of the colorful protagonists in the much anticipated third nonfiction book by Christy Leskovar, EAST OF THE EAST SIDE.
Leskovar will be in Helena and East Helena for speaking engagements about EAST OF THE EAST SIDE. The book is historical nonfiction and includes much Helena and East Helena history packed into a fascinating story.
On Wednesday, September 21, at 6:30pm, she will speak at the Boulder, MT, library.
On Thursday, September 22, at 4:30pm, she will speak at the Montana Historical Society.
On Saturday, September 24, at 1pm, she will speak at the East Helena Library.
All are welcome and the events are free. Books will be available for purchase and a book signing will follow the talks.
“When my grandfather Tony Leskovar began his music career at the dawn of the 20th century, concert musicians in Austria were treated like movie stars of today,” said Leskovar. “They were idolized. The flags were lowered to half mast in Vienna when an opera star died. And then to be performing with the opera in Paris in 1914–Tony was definitely at the top of his game. It all went to pieces when the First World War started.”
Tony’s future father-in-law, Joe Lozar, escaped dirt-poor poverty in the southern reaches of the Austro-Hungarian Empire by doing what so many others did in his situation in the 19th century–he came to America, to East Helena, where he built his saloon, the old Rock Hut. Tony worked for Joe part time, delivering groceries. He would marry the boss’s daughter. All was on the upswing until Joe became afflicted with gold fever and faced off against one of the most powerful men in the state. Joe had no idea he was tangling with a bearcat–none other than John Neill, one of the bagmen for William Andrews Clark in the election bribery scandal.
To find the story, Leskovar traveled to Slovenia and Vienna and Helena and Butte. She spent a lot of time at the Montana Historical Society, the Butte Archives, the World Museum of Mining, and courthouses where she pored through archives and library holdings and court records. “Some of the entries in the church books in Slovenia were written in Gothic German, which I don’t read,” she said. “Fortunately I met many helpful people there who did read Gothic and translated for me.”
She also read a lot of books as part of her research. “Being from Butte,” Leskovar said, “I expected to walk into a bookstore in Helena and see a wall of books about Helena. Didn’t happen. There aren’t many books about Helena. Helena has great history and great stories, which I discovered while researching EAST OF THE EAST SIDE. Helena might not have as many scoundrels as Butte but I found plenty. Those great stories, with larger-than-life characters, are in the book. All true. Thoroughly researched. I didn’t realize when I began that I’d be helping to fill a void in the historical record for Helena and East Helena. I write accessible history. A history professor at Washington State said my books are like getting medicine stuffed in peanut butter. You get a history lesson and don’t know it because you have so much fun reading it.”
Her grandfather Tony Leskovar performed with the Butte Mines Band, and he was conductor of the symphony. “Shortly before I began my research someone stumbled across the band papers in a building in Uptown Butte and gave them to the Butte Archives. Those were a treasure trove,” Leskovar explained. “The historical context helps to understand the people, what they went through, the decisions they made. Had I not come across Will Campbell, the editor of the paper in Helena during the First World War, I might not have understood why some of the women in the story left. At least I think I know why. Each reader will draw his or her own conclusions. One thing I learned from talking with readers of my first book, ONE NIGHT IN A BAD INN, though I wrote the book, and it’s nonfiction, once someone reads it, the story becomes theirs because each person brings his or her own perspective to it.”
EAST OF THE EAST SIDE is also nonfiction. “Sticking to the facts is more of a challenge and much more time consuming but also more fun,” said Leskovar.
One of many historical gems that she unearthed was an account by the American ambassador in Paris when the First World War broke out. “That’s how I was able to describe what was happening to my grandfather Tony Leskovar when he unwittingly became an enemy alien.”
EAST OF THE EAST SIDE spans the late 19th to mid 20th centuries. The places include peasant farms in the Slovenian region of Austria, Imperial Vienna, 1914 Paris, the early days of Helena and East Helena, Butte and the Slavic enclave of East Butte, the Flathead Indian Reservation, and the fertile desert of eastern Washington.
“This is such an American story,” said Leskovar, “to go from the Paris opera to the Flathead Indian Reservation with rugged smelter and mining towns in between, I found it fascinating.”
“This is such an American story,” said Leskovar, “to go from the Paris opera to the Flathead Indian Reservation with rugged smelter and mining towns in between, I found it fascinating.”
Leskovar was born in Butte. She attended St. Ann’s. Her family moved to Kennewick, Washington, when her parents bought a bankrupt car dealership there. She earned degrees in Mechanical Engineering and French from Seattle University. She joined Bechtel in Maryland in 1982, but left her engineering career after a trip to Butte in 1997 that would radically alter the course of her life. She brings the tenacity and thoroughness of an engineer to her historical research. Her writing is honed by a lifelong love of reading great literature. Though her books are nonfiction, they read like novels.
EAST OF THE EAST SIDE is available in print, e-book, and digital audiobook, as are Christy Leskovar’s first two books, ONE NIGHT IN A BAD INN and FINDING THE BAD INN: DISCOVERING MY FAMILY’S HIDDEN PAST. Pictures and maps are exclusive to the print editions. For more information, visit www.ChristyLeskovar.com
