The way Paterson works in the historical details that are known-the terrible plight of the workers and their families, the evolution of the strike, the support from the growing labor movement around the country-is moving and sound. The man, an accomplished stone worker and nobody's fool, soon suspects Jake is lying, but his response is unexpectedly kind. An Italian American couple takes in Rosa and Jake, who are pretending to be brother and sister. The two are sent with other children from Lawrence to Barre, Vermont, to socialist families supporting the strikers by taking in the starving children, taking care of them until the strike is over. Jake is a worker himself, abused by his drunken father, illiterate, a petty thief. Rosa is slightly ashamed of them, their poor English, their risk-taking. Rosa's mother and older sister are workers who are completely committed to the strike. It's interesting because neither of them, Rosa or Jake, is an enthusiast for workers' rights they just get swept up in the events surrounding them.
She tells of two young people's experience over the several months of the strike. In some ways it is a continuation of the theme of her novel Lyddie, about a mill worker in Lowell, Massachusetts in the mid-19th century. This historical novel is about the strike by workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912. 5))Įverything Paterson writes is excellent. Claire Rosser (KLIATT Review, September 2006 (Vol.
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