The Red-Winged Blackbird

"The whole world operates on coal, boys. Men will kill for it. That makes a miner pretty damn powerful." Powerful, yes. But in the viperous worlds of mining, union organizing and warfare, digging coal can make a miner a sitting duck, too. Alan Tanner reckons he's just another coalass trying to make a living, care for his family and have a little fun. Trouble is, death stalks him. His mine explodes and the stench of bloody carcasses lingers. The UMW secretly organizes and risks a...
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"The whole world operates on coal, boys. Men will kill for it. That makes a miner pretty damn powerful." Powerful, yes. But in the viperous worlds of mining, union organizing and warfare, digging coal can make a miner a sitting duck, too. Alan Tanner reckons he's just another coalass trying to make a living, care for his family and have a little fun. Trouble is, death stalks him. His mine explodes and the stench of bloody carcasses lingers. The UMW secretly organizes and risks a strike. Brutal guards and soldiers threaten. Gunrunning flourishes. Hostilities rupture into battle. After fending off machine gun and rifle fire all day, the young miner watches helplessly as the tent homes of a thousand strikers erupt in flame. The "New York Times" calls it "the Ludlow Massacre." Screams of widows and orphans haunt him. It's time for vengeance. The subsequent war that consumes Tanner becomes the bloodiest, costliest labor dispute in American history. With "The Red-Winged Blackbird," the long-overlooked Colorado coal strike of 1913-14 springs to life with an urgency that can only come from one who lived it. By turns humorous and heart-rending, Tanner's story chronicles the depths men will plummet for hunks of coal and the right to dig them.