My publisher just sent me the formatted ebook copy of my new novel: ANYWHERE BUT SCHUYLKILL!

Just have to correct any errors and then it'll be ready to launch, later this week or next!!

Curious?

Check my website for details: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/

Order it soon from Historium Press: http://wix.to/M9gMx11

#AnywhereButSchuylkill #HistoricalFiction #novel #books #LaborHistory #WorkingClass #author #writer #coal #mining #police #PoliceBrutality #WorkplaceSafety #ChildLabor

"Anywhere but Schuylkill" by Michael Dunn - coming soon from Historium Press! Check it out!! http://wix.to/M9gMx11

“The Banshees of Inisherin and 1917 are two of the best historical films I’ve seen in recent years, particularly the cinematography. Yet the visuals Michael Dunn creates in Anywhere But Schuylkill, are richer, more vivid, more imaginative, and more haunting and indelible than what I recall in those brilliant films. It’s like the author transports himself to each scene and brings to life each physical detail, each expression, each emotion, and each word of dialogue with the care of a Renaissance painter.”

—David Aretha, award-winning author of Malala Yousafzai and the Girls of Pakistan and Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1963 March on Washington.

#AnyWhereButSchuylkill #HistoricalFiction #fiction #novel #author #writer #coal #miners #union #strike #pennsylvania #WorkingClass #LaborHistory #ChildLabor #PoliceBrutality #capitalism @bookstadon

Coming soon, “Anywhere But Schuylkill,” my historical novel about the Pennsylvania coal wars. The blue image in the background is the painting, “The Breaker Boys,” by George Luks (1925). Luks was associated with the “aggressively realistic” Ashcan School of American painting. He was also from Shenandoah, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, where my novel takes place, and makes a cameo appearance as a child, working in his father’s pharmacy. His father, Emil (Doc) Luks was a physician and pharmacist, and a well-known friend of the miners, often treating them for free or at discounted prices during strikes and economic depressions.

https://www.thehistoricalfictioncompany.com/michael-dunn

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #mining #union #strike #Pinkertons #HistoricalFiction #fiction #novel #author #writer #AnywhereButSchuylkill @bookstadon

Today in Labor History July 20 1877: In the midst of the Great Upheaval (AKA Great Train Strike), the Maryland state militia fired on striking railroad workers in Baltimore, killing over 20, including children. The strike had started on July 14, in Martinsburg, WV, at the B&O Railroad yards. It quickly spread into Charleston, WV and Baltimore and Cumberland, MD. In Baltimore, as the 5th Regiment marched toward Camden Station with fixed bayonets on their Springfield rifles, crowds attacked them with bricks. Miraculously, no serious injuries occurred. However, when the 6th Regiment began their march, the crowds drove them off with paving stones and fists. Without orders, they began firing at the crowd, killing several. When the two regiments met at Camden Station, the crowds again hurled stones and bricks, disabling locomotives, tearing up tracks and driving off the engineers. They set fire to railroad cars and buildings and cut the firemen’s hoses when they tried to douse the flames.

The Great Upheaval came in the middle of the Long Depression, one of the worst depressions the U.S. has ever faced. My novel, “Anywhere But Schuylkill,” (hopefully out by year’s end) takes place in the years leading up to the Great Strike and is Part I of “The Great Upheaval” trilogy. I am currently working on Book II: “Red Hot Summer in the Smoky City.”

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #GreatUpheaval #railroad #baltimore #massacre #children #GeneralStrike #AnywhereButSchuylkill #novel #HistoricalFiction #writer #author @bookstadon

Today in Labor History June 11, 1837: The Broad Street Riot occurred in Boston, between Irish Americans and Yankee firefighters. As shocking as this might seem to today’s readers, it was relatively common in the mid- to late-1800s. First, fire departments were generally volunteer or private organizations made up of ethnically similar people. Secondly, Nativist and anti-Catholic sentiment was rampant, which led to regular fights between “native” or Protestant fire crews and immigrant Catholic-Irish crews. Such a fight plays prominently in my historical novel, “Anywhere But Schuylkill.” This phenomenon is discussed in Noel Ignatiev’s excellent book, “How the Irish Became White.”

During the Broad Street Riot, roughly 800 people brawled, with 10,000 spectators egging them on. The firefighters vandalized nearby homes and businesses and beat residents (mostly Irish). While injuries were severe and pervasive, nobody died. The mayor had to call in the state militia to put down the riot. In the aftermath, Boston created its first municipal police and fire departments.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #BroadStreet #boston #riot #firefighters #racism #militia #vandalism #immigrant #catholic #HistoricalFiction #novel #author #writer #police #AnywhereButSchuylkill @bookstadon

Today in Labor History June 1 is the day that U.S. labor law officially allows children under the age of 16 to work up to 8 hours per day between the hours of 7:00 am and 9:00 pm. Time is ticking away, Bosses. Have you signed up sufficient numbers of low-wage tykes to maintain production rates with your downsized adult staffs?

The reality is that child labor laws have always been violated regularly by employers and these violations have been on the rise recently. Additionally, many lawmakers are seeking to weaken existing, poorly enforced laws to make it even easier to exploit children. Over the past year, the number of children employed in violation of labor laws rose by 37%, while lawmakers in at least 10 states passed, or introduced, new laws to roll back the existing rules. Violations include hiring kids to work overnight shifts in meatpacking factories, cleaning razor-sharp blades and using dangerous chemical cleaners on the kills floors for companies like Tyson and Cargill. Particularly vulnerable are migrant youth who have crossed the southern U.S. border from Central America, unaccompanied by parents. https://www.epi.org/publication/child-labor-laws-under-attack/
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Of course, what is happening in the U.S. is small potatoes compared with many other countries, where exploitation of child labor is routine, and often legal. Kids are almost always paid far less than adults, increasing the bosses’ profits. They are often more compliant than adults and less likely to form unions and resist. Bosses can get them to do dangerous tasks that adults can’t, or won’t, do, like unclogging the gears and belts of machinery. This was also the norm in the U.S., well into the 20th century. In my soon (I hope) to be released novel, “Anywhere But Schuylkill,” the protagonist, Mike Doyle, works as a coal cleaner in the breaker (coal crushing facility) of a coal mine at the age or 13. Many kids began work in the collieries before they were 10. They often were missing limbs and died young from lung disease. However, when the breaker bosses abused them, they would sometimes collectively chuck rocks and coal at them, or walk out, en masse, in wildcat strikes. And when their fathers, who worked in the pits, as laborers and miners, went on strike, they would almost always walk out with them, in solidarity.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #children #ChildLabor #exploitation #capitalism #nike #AnywhereButSchuylkill #coal #mining #fiction #novel #HisFic #HistoricalFiction @bookstadon