What is the price of copper?

It’s the summer of 1913. Death is commonplace in this small mining town in Michigan.

Annie Clements’ husband works in the mines. Despite his reluctance to join the union, Annie recognizes its potential after yet another neighbor dies a preventable death. Soon she organizes the other wives, mothers, and sisters to translate union materials into the 33 languages spoken in their community. Through their galvanizing efforts to enlist the men, enough votes are called for a strike. 

Soon the Women's Auxiliary is not only planning marches, but organizing food and clothing banks. Annie not only takes the lead behind the scenes, but can be seen at the head of every parade carrying the American flag.  “Although men are the backbone of the union,” Maria Doria Russell writes in The Women of Copper Country, “women are its heart and soul.”

James MacNaughton, general manager of Calumet & Hecla, prides himself on the neat appearance of the homes and businesses of his domain, but neglects to remember the names of his household staff. He stubbornly refuses to negotiate. The strike continues.  

As summer turns to fall and then winter, the strikers are galvanized by visitors such as Mother Jones and threatened by a team of professional strikebreakers. In addition to her cast of unforgettable characters, many drawn from real life, Russell gives us a glimpse of not only early 20^th century working conditions, but its penal system, photojournalism, politics, and attitude toward immigrants.

Just as the novel begins with a death, so it ends with a tragedy that leaves no family unaffected. Broken-spirited, those that haven't left town return to the mines. In a turn of poetic injustice, upon his return, each man is required to pay five cents to buy a gold watch of “gratitude” for MacNaughton.

“You, my fulgurite”

Some books offer the perfect escape route. You can ignore the pile of laundry that sits in the basket waiting to be folded, avoid looking at the stack of lesson plans waiting to be executed, and turn a deaf ear to kids fighting over a ukulele. Instead, you can slip into someone else’s inner thoughts, fears, worries, even joys.

Wait, Blink: A Perfect Picture of Inner Life by Gunnhild Øyehaug (translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson) 

“Sigrid has her head on her arms on her desk and is thinking. She has to change. She has to toughen up. She has to stop analyzing everything and stop being so caught up in things that she forgets all else around her, and she has to stop thinking that people are all interested in the same things as her. Because they’re not! They’re not, Paul de Man, she says, and presses his nose with her finger. Naturally, Paul de Man doesn’t answer: after all, he’s Belgian, and a photograph.”

Some books have the opposite effect. Rather than offering a reprieve, they leave you discombobulated and grumpy. You don’t delight in the character’s observations, but scoff, shaking your head and asking, desolately, “Why?!”

The New Me by Halle Butler

“I get socked in the chest, thinking about how things never change. How they’re on a slow-rolling slope downward, and you can think up a long list of things you’d rather do, but because of some kind of inertia, or hard facts about who you are and what life is, you always end up back where you started, sitting drunk on a hard, sticky chair with someone you hate.” 

But even books like these work their magic, propelling you off the sofa to tackle that to-do list, compelling you to look inward to face the work that needs to be done.

Beloved

I can’t remember which came first: being assigned Beloved in my high school English class or finding the three volume collection of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, and Sula in a used bookstore. 

Regardless, I do remember reading Beloved over a long weekend in the dorm room I was assigned during a prospective students’ visit to the University of Dallas. Rather than socializing, I immersed myself in the world of Sethe, Denver, Paul D and Beloved.  I remember being challenged by “124” and trying to wrap my head around the horrors of slavery and its effect on subsequent generations. But also, entranced, as millions of others have been, by Morrison’s style and storytelling.

For more on Morrison’s life, I recommend this article and interview of its author, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah.

Summer of radio plays

In honor of our new summer tradition of podcasts (and more podcasts) and puzzles, today’s post is a review of Flora by Gail Godwin, reposted from 2013.

It's the summer of 1945 and Helen is ten. Her father is spending the summer overseeing construction for the war effort in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Helen is less than thrilled to find out her mother's cousin Flora will be spending the summer with her. To make matters worse, Helen's best friend contracts polio, and Helen and Flora must spend the remainder of the summer quarantined. They quickly befriend the young man who delivers their groceries, plying him with lemonade and cheese straws. Finn in turn starts showing up daily to give Flora driving lessons.  

 The peaceful routine of the summer is shattered in August when the household discovers an atomic bomb has been dropped on Hiroshima and Helen's father's work at Oak Ridge is somehow involved. That same night Helen's discovery of Finn's true feelings for her "simple-minded" cousin triggers a series of events that will have devastating consequences for everyone in the family.

Godwin's story, narrated by Helen, looks back with nostalgia and retrospection to that lonely summer of radio plays, daydreams, and a temptingly unread packet of her grandmother's letters. Helen discovers that what at first appears to be simple-minded in Flora's teaching is actually simple-hearted. And it is a distinction that the reader will also take to heart.