Review copies and interviews are available upon request. Contact Marilyn Hering - mhering@optonline.net.
In 1913, 24,000 silk workers in Paterson, New Jersey, went on strike, demanding an eight-hour work day and better working conditions--reasonable requests that nevertheless led to the arrest of over 1800 people. Young Eleanor O'Bannion was not arrested, but she was there. Living in the tenements of Paterson, she survived near starvation, poverty, and illness. She survived with the yearnings of love.
Her heart belongs to the charismatic and passionate Dante Ravelli, a union leader, supporting the workers at the Great Silk Strike. But, can Eleanor trust him to love her back? Against her better judgment, she decides to marry Charles Lafferty, the wealthy son of a silk baron. Charles is stable, dependable, and safe. So why does she continue to think about the dashing Ravelli?
Eleanor carries her own secret past, and this secret robs her of any happiness as she struggles to look to the future and find fulfilling love with her husband. She has survived so much; she knows she will continue to thrive. Any choice she makes will hurt a man she loves. Who will she choose in the end: Ravelli or Charles--or perhaps her own liberation?
Hering is a former English teacher, MA, and Ph.D equivalent in English. She lived through a lot of the story. Her dad was a weaver in the mills of Paterson, most often on strike than not. She realized the centennial would be coming up for the Great Silk Strike and thought the book could somehow coincide with that as well. She is working on a sequel.
Hering lived in Paterson for 25 years or so. So much pain and suffering took place during the strike, including violence and death, and no book she could find anywhere covered this topic, which is really important to New Jersey history.
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