Why Join?

  • Add New Books

  • Write a Review

  • Backpack Reading Lists

  • Monthly Newsletter

Join Now

Blood on the Forge

Blood on the Forge

Author(s): William Attaway

Location(s): Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh

Genre(s): Fiction, Historical

Era(s): First half of the 20th Century

Location

Content

This brutally gripping novel about the African-American Great Migration follows the three Moss brothers, who flee the rural South to work in industries up North. Delivered by day into the searing inferno of the steel mills, by night they encounter a world of surreal devastation, crowded with dogfighters, whores, cripples, strikers, and scabs. Keenly sensitive to character, prophetic in its depiction of environmental degradation and globalized labor, Attaway’s novel is an unprecedneted confrontation with the realities of American life, offering an apocalyptic vision of the melting pot not as an icon of hope but as an instrument of destruction.

Review this Book

To review this book, please

Log in

Book Reviews

Lead Review

This novel powerfully depicts both the Black migration to the industrial north after WWI – Soames –

Read review