The Company Doctor and the Union Wife
A Novel of the 1927 Colorado Coal Strike

About this book:

In the frozen canyons of 1927 Colorado, the company owns the mines, the homes, the store—and the only doctor for miles. Dr. Ethan Vance has spent years stitching up miners crushed by rock falls and black lung, content to keep his head down and his ledger clean for the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. But when the men walk out over a seven-cent pay cut and the superintendent cuts off water, coal, and medical care to the striking families, Ethan's neutrality becomes impossible. His only ally in the patch is Clara Novak: a union organizer's wife who tends the sick with stolen camphor and a will of iron, and who knows exactly how far the company will go to break the strike.

As blizzards bury the canyon and the Baldwin-Felts gunmen arrive, Ethan begins a dangerous double life—funneling morphine and clean water to the families he's forbidden to treat, while Captain Vance watches the dispensary's back door. Each house call into the patch is an act of treason; each child saved from pneumonia is a bullet dodged. But when the strike reaches its bloody crescendo at the Columbine Mine, Ethan must decide whether his oath to the state medical board means more than the roof over his head—and whether Clara's fierce, uncompromising hope is something worth bleeding for.

*The Company Doctor and the Union Wife* is a gripping historical novel of conscience under pressure, set against one of America's most brutal labor wars. With the moral complexity of *The Grapes of Wrath* and the tense intimacy of *Year of Wonders*, it asks what a healer owes the wounded when the wounders sign his paychecks—and what happens when a doctor finally chooses a side.