My paternal eastern European grandfather worked in the underground mines on the Mesabi Iron Range in northern Minnesota around Eveleth. My father worked for the railroad which transported the mined and processed ore from the range to the ore docks in Duluth.
As a young man, I was employed by United States Steel in their Minnesota taconite ore operations.
My foreman on my first midnight shift in the open pit mining operation at Mt. Iron had been a co-worker with grandfather before in the underground mining. From these sources came the first stories I remember of earlier days when the mines were organized in northern Minnesota.
My mother is from St Louis, MO. Three generations of her family lived in the lead mining areas south west of the city in the area surrounding Bonne Terre. They were of British and Welsh descent. Her paternal grandfather was a blacksmith and an itinerant Methodist preacher on the weekends.
When my brother and I visited the area to look for relatives, we were taken aback by the large chat piles in the area. Chat is the waste rejected in the lead-zinc milling operations. This landscape was similar to the iron ore dumps that surrounded the towns we grew up in. It hadn’t occurred to either of us that the open pit mining industry would look similar in another state for another type of ore.
While working on my doctorate focused on the evolution of technical colleges in Minnesota, I collected more organizing stories in between articles I studied on the growth of industrial training and vocational education in the state. During this time, my imagination creatively forged a fictitious story of a young Finnish couple growing up in the middle of the radical behaviors aligned with the growth of America emerging as an industrial and economic world power.
I invite you to follow Joe and Sara for one year of their life as they navigate the colossal practical and philosophical issues facing their everyday lives in 1928 – 1929. In order to help you identify closer with the story’s context, each chapter contains links to information of a local, regional and national level related to this time period.
I trust you will find their lives were not as simple as you may have thought. I also believe you will learn from their conflicts and grow in your appreciation of our contemporary life style. You might gain an insight into the shadows of what they endured and observe them cast in our world today.
I am available by in person, by phone or Skype to discuss this novel and issues related with you, your book club or class. Please let me know your interest:
Bruce Mine Incident 