Aletho News

Book Review: Firedamp

By Ben Zeller

Firedamp is a work of gripping fiction rooted in fact. It is a story of love, hate and revolution, of heroes and villains. In the late eighteen/early nineteen hundreds thousands of poor but hopeful immigrant coal miners, railroaded to the Colorado/New Mexico border, found themselves and their families in a hostile environment. Forced to work under deplorable conditions for next to nothing, they fought back. It is this story and the story of the powerfully wealthy men who tried to drive them to do their bidding.

Charles Winslow, the wealthy railroad man / mine owner, and his family are products of my imagination as are most characters in the novel including the Slovak powder-man, Leos Nemcova and his son, born on the docks of NYC in the blizzard of 1888. In the storm’s fury the boy’s mother, Frederica Arial, a strikingly beautiful, manipulative woman, abandons her son and husband. Frederica will stop at nothing to achieve monetary goals in her new world. The story traces all of their lives to Trinidad Colorado. Black John, George Metaxas, King Trec, Hector Finnigan and the Sol Bertilina family are among the book’s fictional characters. From the fabulously wealthy to the wretchedly poor these people are as real as the atrocities committed by them and against them were real: as the tragic revolution those atrocities spawned was real.

In the telling I fictionalize historical figures instrumental in the story’s plot. Winslow’s and Rockefeller’s cold-blooded mine superintendent, LM Bowers, is an example. (Bowers telegrams to Junior Rockefeller and Mr. Junior’s replies are authenticated and on record in the Trinidad, Colorado Public Library.) Louis Tikis, Sheriff Farr, Monty Linderfelt, the Fighting Greeks and the Black Hand Committee were real people and real organizations plucked from Raton NM. and Trinidad CO. history of that time

Before and while writing FIREDAMP I spent weeks listening to those who lived through that era or whose parents lived through it. At the age of eleven, my friend Gabe Lucero went to work in the mines of Dawson, New Mexico. (Gabe’s father and brothers were killed in Dawson Mines disasters.) I interviewed Congressman Judge, J. Edgar Chenowith of Trinidad who as a boy in 1914 stood on the street corner when the women marched in protest to free the 82 year old Mother Jones. (She was incarcerated under orders issued by LM Bowers.) I read reams of newsprint, biased and unbiased, published during these troubled times. I gleaned much first-hand information from Papa John Oborosoler, my daughters’ great grandfather, who left the mines to raise his family on Johnson Mesa. Papa John was delivering vegetables to strikers in the tent city of Ludlow the day Bowers’ hand- picked militia opened fire. The people in the Public Library of Trinidad were an immense help. Peter Collier & David Horowitz’s book, THE ROCKEFELLERS gave me historical insight. I used all of this to spur my imagination. – Ben Zeller April, 2002

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December 20, 2010 - Posted by aletho | Economics, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular