Out of This Furnace: Historical Fiction Novel About Immigrant Workers in America - Perfect for Book Clubs & American History Enthusiasts

The book was published in 1940. The author was perhaps 35 years old at the time. He describes three generations of a family that originated in a village in Slovakia. His family, and others were from a small village in Slovakia. They all wound up in the steel mills at Braddock Pennsylvania. The Irish laborers, who had come before them, derided them as "Hunkies". The writer describes the experiences of the first two generations (1885 or to 1920) in a way loosely based on his own family. Steel mills are dangerous places and people get killed or severely injured.The male in the third generation becomes a union organizer and that part of the story is not based on the writer's own family experience. Rather it's based on the notes and other information from a different person who was in fact a union organizer. The story ends with the birth of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Industrial workers such as the Hunkies "didn't get no respect" from the American Federation of Labor which favored skilled craftsmen as union members.All of these novels about the immigrant experience of various ethnic groups are interesting. It might be Rolvaag;s "Giants of The Earth" [Norwegians on the prairie" or more recently Karl Marlantes "Deep River' Finnish immigrants in the logging industry in Southwest Washington state. But each them has a lot to say about the lived experience of different groups.They are also reflective of their time. Out of This Furnace was published in 1940. The third generation "Hunkie" is now assimilated--he expresses the American creed with optimism which might appear a bit much in these days. But it's a good book, a good story, and worth the reader's time.