What People Are Saying:
A fighter, a dreamer
R.S. Sukle of Marion
grew up intrigued by her father's tales of 'rabble-rousing' and coal
strikes, yet puzzled by her family's secrecy. Today she's writing a
trilogy based on her dad's life.
HUNTINGTON NEWS:
“Miner Injustice” is an often violent, often tender, always relevant
historical novel that will resonate with many people in West Virginia,
as well as those in the mining areas of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky
and Ohio. ...If you like the historical fiction of Thomas Mallon
(“Bandbox,” Henry and Clara”) or John Updike (“In The Beauty of the
Lillies”) you’ll enjoy “Miner Injustice.” If you long for a taste of
John Steinbeck or fellow Californian (born in Chicago) Frank Norris,
this book might bring you literary nourishment.
Maybe I’m afflicted with “The Phantom of the Opera” syndrome – the tunes
inhabit my head and I can’t get enough of the showings on HBO – but I
can envision “Miner Injustice” as an opera. Weird, but pick up a copy of
this book and see if I’m not right.
Reviewed By
David M. Kinchen,
Huntington News Network Book Critic
A SENIORity book review:
The story is a fast
read that builds to a crescendo. The human misery and suffering brought
this reviewer to tears on two occasions....Having
been the son a steel worker, less than 60 miles from the site of the
Miner Injustice story, the book brought back many memories to this
reviewer--lines of pickets’ raised wooden clubs, police parked outside
the factory, military tents and soldiers, all in the name of keeping
peace. ...I hope the
writer will continue in her field and provide us with more hours of
reading pleasure.
Review
by:
George A. Freeman
Curled Up With A Good Book:
The
strikers also had an iron will after several generations of breaking
their backs and souls to provide the coal this country needed to propel
the Industrial Revolution. They found ways to survive by stealth of day
and night. Some found no way to keep on, and death found them or their
families during these long years. The Ragman found a way. He kept his
family intact, and he watched by day and night the Iron Police and their
foul doings. The secret of these immigrant families and the inhumane
treatment of them, comparable only to the times of indentured servants
and slavery, has never before been revealed as well as Sukle does in her
book. In order to fully grasp the people’s of the coal mining states and
their place in history I can think of no better book than The
Ragman’s War. Review by: Lucinda
Tart
WOMEN WRITERS'
REVIEW: Sukle’s book is well researched and her dialogue
rings true to the accent and the feeling of those fraught times.
It is a praiseworthy effort and one expects to see more of Sukle
as a writer/historian. Review by: Barbara Bamberger Scott
CHRIMSONBIRD:
People in our own era too often
forget that our grandparents had to put their lives on the line to win
every workplace right that they ultimately won. Let's not rely on the
conventional news media to bring attention to the fact that the people
who built society's economic base from top to bottom have been so
frequently denied the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor. Thomas
Jefferson's observation that "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance"
is as true on the industrial field as it is on the political field. In
addition to the intrinsic value of Sukle's book as a suspenseful story,
I hope and believe that it will promote greater awareness of the
significance of giving our full support to organized labor. Reviewed
by Mike Lepore
BOOKLOONS:
I don't
understand the thinking that Americans would never commit the atrocities
that we are seeing today. I refer to starting wars and abusing
prisoners. The Ragman's War recounts a shameful piece of
our past - a coal miners' strike in 1927-28. Have we learned nothing
from history?
...The Ragman's War
tells this tale - a hard one to read. It tells of desperately ill people
being carried from their homes - during eviction - and placed on the
frozen ground to fend for themselves. Reviewed by
Mary Ann Smyth
Bookpleasures: The history
of the working classes is an important part of every country’s history
and it is one that is too often forgotten. This is especially true of
the struggle for working conditions which took so long to achieve and
which is constantly under threat from ‘deregulation’ and the spectre of
outsourcing. The author locates her story in the tradition of Robert
Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, which remains as one of
the central texts in the study of working class life and work. And like
Tressell, she makes her story readable and her characters believable.
Reviewed by Dr. John Walsh
A review by Jack P. Wise
B.S., M.S.
... A comparison comes immediately to mind: The Grapes of Wrath of the
coal mines.
Daily News, McKeesport, PA - Reviewer: David Sallinger
...The reality is worse than the fiction, and prompts the reader to want
to know more...
THE ITALIAN AMERICAN PRESS:
We believe that your book is a
well written and well documented text dramatically depicting a difficult
time in our country's labor history. It is a book well worth reading.
THE MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW:
Sukle deals with the strike by
coal miners in western Pennsylvania in 1927-28 in a novelistic style.
The miners were unionized, but this did not mean much at this time.
They were subject to violent retaliation and attempts to control and
intimidate them by Coal and Iron police hired by the mine owners, who
for the most part had the support of government officials at all
levels. Individual miners committed some violence too. But the
violence is only part of the story Sukle relates. With dialogue,
scenes, and other techniques of the novel, she enters the stressful
family lives of the miners and their wives; organizing, defensive
measures, and other activities of the miners; and relationships among
the different factions involved in the strike. Ragman is a mine
mechanic who is the central character. Each chapter opens with
newspaper reports about the strike followed by the author's novelistic
embellishment of the particular events or subjects. Reviewer: Henry
Berry
PITTSBURGH
MAGAZINE: …Sukle’s research is sound,
and she deftly adopts the voices of the families she profiles.
Chrimsonbird -
Reviewer: Mike Lepore
...The book is based on historical facts and presented realistically..
On Amazon.com:
“In Bucket of Blood, Sukle has
written a fast-paced story of the turmoil and violence surrounding a
1927-1928 Miner's strike in Western Pennsylvania. In a well-written and
entertaining fashion the story illuminates an important and nearly
forgotten struggle in American history for Fair Wages and Fair Working
Conditions. More importantly, Sukle illuminates the human heart and the
strength of character shown by people in challenging conditions. The
author's family history with the early union in the area gives this
novel an authentic voice. I strongly recommend this book.”
A BarnesandNoble.com
reviewer:
“My family 'walked this
walk!!!'
A STORY THAT BEGGED TO BE TOLD!
An absolute masterpiece of reincarnating the chronicle of an era of
workers' solidarity which a segment of society wished would somehow
vanish. This is must reading for any descendants of families of the
former coal mining areas. It truly is a story that begged mercifully to
be told!!!!!!!”
Reviews by email:
“I
LOVED the book. I could not put it down. I can't wait for the next
one.”
From Russellton: “We've gotten calls from several elderly
people who say that you
described what happened very accurately, as they remember it.”
“Sukle's book
was very moving. The movement from chapter to chapter is excellent, and
the narrative comes to such a dramatic climax at the end.
The chapter on their distribution of Christmas gifts brought me to
tears, in fact! The rough behavior of the mine owners was shocking, and
similar to what we expect of a third-world country. I suspect that the
auto industry history is very much like the mine owners. And of course,
the railroad barons are one more class of ruling "despots," whose homes
in Newport are mentioned in Bucket of Blood.”
The book "wow " I could hardly put it down.
Everything was so interesting and I lived a lot of it, but in the
Curtisville area. When I came on DR Cross's name that sure rang a bell,
he took my tonsils out in the Curtisville office, can you imagine that
happening now. the writing was exciting, I was right there with
everything.
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