Out of This Furnace - (Regional) by Thomas Bell (Paperback)

About the Book

Our all-time bestselling title, this classic and powerful novel spanning three generations of a Slovak immigrant family. It has been adopted for course use in more than 300 colleges and universities nationwide.

Book Synopsis

Out of This Furnace is Thomas Bell's most compelling achievement. Its story of three generations of an immigrant Slovak family -- the Dobrejcaks -- still stands as a fresh and extraordinary accomplishment.

The novel begins in the mid-1880s with the naive blundering career of Djuro Kracha. It tracks his arrival from the old country as he walked from New York to White Haven, his later migration to the steel mills of Braddock, Pennsylvania, and his eventual downfall through foolish financial speculations and an extramarital affair. The second generation is represented by Kracha's daughter, Mary, who married Mike Dobrejcak, a steel worker. Their decent lives, made desperate by the inhuman working conditions of the mills, were held together by the warm bonds of their family life, and Mike's political idealism set an example for the children. Dobie Dobrejcak, the third generation, came of age in the 1920s determined not to be sacrificed to the mills. His involvement in the successful unionization of the steel industry climaxed a half-century struggle to establish economic justice for the workers.

Out of This Furnace is a document of ethnic heritage and of a violent and cruel period in our history, but it is also a superb story. The writing is strong and forthright, and the novel builds constantly to its triumphantly human conclusion.

From the Back Cover

The novel begins in the mid-1880s with the naive blundering career of Djuro Kracha. It tracks his arrival from the old country as he walked from New York to White Haven, his later migration to the steel mills of Braddock, and his eventual downfall through foolish financial speculations and an extramarital affair.

Review Quotes

Out of This Furnace illuminates the lives of workers who labored to produce millions of tons of steel. It shows in careful detail how they retained their hope for the future and how they regarded their lives as workers.-- "Labor History"

Out of This Furnace, a novel of immigrant labor, is based on the history of Thomas Bell's family in Braddock, Pennsylvania.... He was a master of realism, not immersing the reader in a mass of facts and events, but instead selecting materials that build the tone and totality of the narrative.... The impact of place and culture on the steel workers and their families is the theme of Out of This Furnace.... A reading of Out of This Furnace adds a dimension to the study of labor conditions and history that is not often tapped by sociological and historical research.-- "Labor Studies Journal"

From the afterword: The family chronicle of the novel spans three generations. The blundering, ineffective career of George Kracha, who, in 1881, is the first in the family to migrate to America, dominates the first section; the better-ordered but work-exploited lives of Mike and Mary Dobrejcak in the early twentieth century are the subject of the middle of the book; finally there is the familiarly American life-style of Dobie Dobrejcak, who comes of age in the 1920s and is active in the successful unionizing of the mills in the 1930s. In its larger implications, Out of This Furnace is about the acculturation and evolving political consciousness of the immigrant workers of America's steel towns. It is a history of an important phase of the labor movement, a splendid memorial to a particular ethnic group.--David P. Demarest Jr.

Historians have rediscovered Thomas Bell's novel of immigrant life in the steel industry in and around Pittsburgh. Written in 1941, Out of This Furnace depicts, perhaps better than any historical monograph, the ethnic tensions, immigrant aspirations, occupational hazards, and familial means of surviving the harsh factory regime. It is the story of the Kracha and Dobrecjak families over three generations, largely in the steel town of Braddock. Through these two Slovak immigrant families, Bell is able to weave together many stories of ethnic communities, of the steel industry, of neighborhoods, and of the rise of the CIO in a way that demonstrates just how interrelated were all of these facets of working-class life. Thanks to the University of Pittsburgh Press's reissuing of Bell's novel in paper, many undergraduates are now discovering the pathos and the triumphs of the Dobrecjaks in American history surveys. David Demarest provided a useful introduction which sets the novel in its historical, and personal, contexts, for Out of This Furnace is closely linked to the actual childhood experiences of the author.-- "Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies"

In a powerful novel that spans three generations of a Slovak family, Thomas Bell vividly tells the story of immigrants and their children who lived, toiled, and died in America's mill towns.-- "Journal of American Ethnic History"

On its economic side Out of this Furnace is a simple, perhaps too simple, please for the dispossessed. But it is not, for all his earnestness, Mr. Bell's roughhewn, black and white economic views which will remain with the reader. The Krachas and Mike go deeper than that. So do the frankness and humanity which make Thomas Bell a memorable storyteller.-- "The New York Times Book Review"

This is not the usual labor novel, with its set thesis and set pattern. Its strength comes from its everyday reality and the lives that crowd its pages.... The picture is powerfully drawn, and stays in the mind.... [it] is one of the novels of the year-- "New York Herald Tribune"

A wonderful book to use for a survey of American history.-- "Mary Frederickson, University of Alabama"

I use Out of This Furnace as a first reading in my American History course because it provides an overview of the period, introduces the idea of industrialization from a worker point of view, and provides insights into immigrant ethnic communities in twentieth-century America.-- "Lawrence Levine, George Mason University"

About the Author

Thomas Bell grew up in the steel-mill town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, enduring the hardships that faced his Slovak family and learning the agonies of life dominated by the mill. He wanted desperately to be a writer. Although he had little formal education, over the years he developed a self-taught style of simple vigor and extraordinary clarity. Eventually he published six novels and won national acclaim.