The Real Widow Maker

"The Real Widow Maker” is a composition of short stories highlighting some of America’s worst mining tragedies, including disasters at the Sago, Crandall Canyon, and Upper Big Branch mines. The book tells of the coalminer’s century-old struggle to achieve a safer workplace, and recounts how a band or Red Necks started the largest labor uprising in U.S history, an uprising so violent that planes dropped bombs on U.S. citizens. The book gives details of the rise of the United Mine Workers of America to the most powerful trade union in the world, but also explains how the union set itself on a course headed toward self-destruction. "The Real Widow Maker" attempts to give proper tribute to the more than 104,710 coalminers who paid the ultimate sacrifice for furnishing this nation with coal, a precious commodity used to produce iron, and generate electricity, which helped to catapult America to the industrial Goliath of the world by the middle of the twentieth century. The book is a saga filled with tragedy, but filled with many heroics too!