From the book jacket:
“On the banks of the Mississippi in an Iowa city, the Jackson Meatpacking Company and its two thousand employees are in trouble. Cutthroat competition has driven the company to the brink of bankruptcy. Jackson’s mayor, a packinghouse worker himself, proposes an employee buyout. However, the idea is quickly stolen from him by the company’s CEO, who will do anything to save the packinghouse, even if it means putting his employees’ life savings at risk.”
Having grown up in the upper Midwest myself, I was able to clearly relate to the setting of this novel. Although it was a different type of factory life in the town where I lived, it was still one of the main ways people made a living there. Factories that produced a particular product everyone needed, the unions that grabbed on for dear life at every opportunity, the stress as the recession of the 1970s threatened closure of the very jobs that people depended on.
To top it off, the book is based around a main character who is a journalist hired to investigate one such factory and get to the bottom of rumors of its potential closing.
I enjoy reading books where the main character is a journalist. Because that’s what my main profession is, I like to compare how authors portray journalists and reporters against what it’s like in “real life.”
T.P. Jones did a pretty good job of making the book believable. He spent quite a bit of time researching his subject matter before attempting to write the novel and it definitely shows. He knows what he’s talking about and as a reader and a reporter, I appreciate that.
This book was sent to me by Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists.
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