In the 20th century, a flood of Central European immigrants, southern Blacks and Latinos sought work in the steel mills, railroads, oil refineries and factories of the Calumet Region of Northwest Indiana and the Pittsburgh area. They settled in diverse and close-knit neighborhoods where ethnic traditions were hardcoded into everyday life along with pollutants that wafted over all, and a second and third generation followed their parents into earning a "good living" through back-breaking union jobs. Children of Steel is a collection of short stories and fictionalized memoir from Americans who woke up to smog-filled skies and slept through nights that flared orange whenever steel was poured at the mills. These stories of life in steel towns recall an awkward first date at the local bowling alley; a contentious flying saucer sighting; an older couple bickering over where to place their plot at the cemetery; a hard-hatted mentor, skin leathered from the heat of the blast ovens, teaching a gangly youth how to stay alive on the fiery line; a group of talented siblings who dream of becoming the next Jackson Five; the struggles of a naive immigrant wife; the mouthwatering foods served at weddings, picnics and funerals; a son who tries to protect his widowed mother from unwanted advances by a neighbor; and the last days of the last bar standing across from a newly automated mill.
This anthology is the nine-year community creative writing project of editor Gloria Ptacek McMillan, Ph.D., born and raised in East Chicago, Indiana, who has taught writing, literature and rhetoric at the University of Arizona Tucson. Its contributors are Jeff Manes, Joan Paylo, Kathy Bashaar, Karen Banks Pearson, Patrick Michael Finn, Sharon Hale Hotko, Curtis Mazzaferri, Barbara Dubos, Joseph S. Pete, Kurt Samano, John Szostek, Hardarshan Singh Valia, Connie Wachala, Alice Whittenburg, Stacy Alderman, Robert McKean, Phyllis Woods, Bianca Roman, Jane Ammeson and Gloria Ptacek McMillan.
