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40 Patchtown: A Novel
Pennsylvania coal miners' strike of 1922 was both prolonged and brutal, especially in the coal patch towns surrounding Windber. Inspired by the violence and heroism of the strike, Damian Dressick spent months researching the rhythms of early coal town life. Immersing himself in coal heritage materials and interviewing retired miners and their wives, he brings us the story of Chet Pistakowski, a teen miner forced to provide for his family during one of the most brutal labor struggles in American history.
190 pages, Paperback
Published January 22, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 2, 2020
In 1922, a 14 year old miner struggles with his older brother to feed his family of six after their father's death. Set in the middle of the mine strikes, this gritty portrayal of life and determination is compelling and immediate. The language is raw and pulls you into Chet's life and the choices he is forced to make. I couldn't put it down.
May 12, 2021
An interesting look back at Windber, a coal mining community near Johnstown, as it went through a famous moment of labor strife.
July 20, 2021
Summary: Set during a coal strike in Windber, Pennsylvania in 1922, captures the hardship striking miners faced in their resistance to mine owners, their efforts to form unions and gain better wages for dangerous work.
My family and that of my wife traces its history to towns between Johnstown, Pennsylvania and Youngstown, Ohio. Many had associations with either the coal or steel industries. I was reminded in reading 40 Patchtown of the stories we heard at family gatherings of mine and mill owners, strikes and strike-breakers, Pinkerton’s, the hardships and the violence that came with encounters between powerful corporations and workers who risk their lives to dig coal out of the earth and to forge the steel that built the nation. There were the ethnic rivalries between eastern Europeans who arrived earlier, and Italians who came later. Company housing, rooming houses, and camps for evicted strikers. Finally, I encountered words I used to hear as a kid, but rarely since like studda-bubba (old woman) and dupa (your butt).
Damian Dressick, a writing professor at Clarion College (Pa.), grew up in coal country and through interviews with retired miners and their families and archival research, captures the hardships, the dangers, the family bonds, and the struggles to maintain worker solidarity during a grinding strike. His novel is set in Windber, Pennsylvania, a small mining town three miles south of Johnstown, in Somerset County during a coal miner strike in 1922. The novel opens with main character Chet Pistakowski joining his older brother Buzzy and a friend to go after “scabs” being brought in to take over the jobs of strikers. Buzzy ends up killing one of the men. The death of this replacement worker intensifies the conflict between the strikers seeking recognition for their union and the company. A train with more replacement workers is surrounded by armed guards who violently suppress and disperse the workers
After Buzzy is apprehended and killed, Chet’s family faces eviction. Dressick takes us into the worker camps and the efforts of union organizers to support the workers and the grinding poverty into which they descended. Chet takes over Buzzy’s job hauling bootlegged alcohol, running risks both with law enforcement and the bootlegging gangs themselves. The job brings in a lot of money, but the illicit activity, what his family and girl friend think of what he is doing, and the time it takes away from the union creates tension within Chet. This all comes to head with the death of a union organizer, confronting him with choices that could change his life or end it.
Dressick tells a riveting story that evokes the conditions of this era without becoming a documentary. The novel raises questions about the moral choices facing those subject to the overwhelming use of power and violence. Do oppressive conditions justify violence? Is violence folly when the oppressor has overwhelmingly superior force? Our understanding of how terrible the conditions these miners faced is intensified when we realize that it is a fourteen year old Chet who must wrestle with questions like these.
____________________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
My family and that of my wife traces its history to towns between Johnstown, Pennsylvania and Youngstown, Ohio. Many had associations with either the coal or steel industries. I was reminded in reading 40 Patchtown of the stories we heard at family gatherings of mine and mill owners, strikes and strike-breakers, Pinkerton’s, the hardships and the violence that came with encounters between powerful corporations and workers who risk their lives to dig coal out of the earth and to forge the steel that built the nation. There were the ethnic rivalries between eastern Europeans who arrived earlier, and Italians who came later. Company housing, rooming houses, and camps for evicted strikers. Finally, I encountered words I used to hear as a kid, but rarely since like studda-bubba (old woman) and dupa (your butt).
Damian Dressick, a writing professor at Clarion College (Pa.), grew up in coal country and through interviews with retired miners and their families and archival research, captures the hardships, the dangers, the family bonds, and the struggles to maintain worker solidarity during a grinding strike. His novel is set in Windber, Pennsylvania, a small mining town three miles south of Johnstown, in Somerset County during a coal miner strike in 1922. The novel opens with main character Chet Pistakowski joining his older brother Buzzy and a friend to go after “scabs” being brought in to take over the jobs of strikers. Buzzy ends up killing one of the men. The death of this replacement worker intensifies the conflict between the strikers seeking recognition for their union and the company. A train with more replacement workers is surrounded by armed guards who violently suppress and disperse the workers
After Buzzy is apprehended and killed, Chet’s family faces eviction. Dressick takes us into the worker camps and the efforts of union organizers to support the workers and the grinding poverty into which they descended. Chet takes over Buzzy’s job hauling bootlegged alcohol, running risks both with law enforcement and the bootlegging gangs themselves. The job brings in a lot of money, but the illicit activity, what his family and girl friend think of what he is doing, and the time it takes away from the union creates tension within Chet. This all comes to head with the death of a union organizer, confronting him with choices that could change his life or end it.
Dressick tells a riveting story that evokes the conditions of this era without becoming a documentary. The novel raises questions about the moral choices facing those subject to the overwhelming use of power and violence. Do oppressive conditions justify violence? Is violence folly when the oppressor has overwhelmingly superior force? Our understanding of how terrible the conditions these miners faced is intensified when we realize that it is a fourteen year old Chet who must wrestle with questions like these.
____________________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
March 4, 2020
Powerful, searing, and poetic in story and language, capturing the rhythm, tones, speech patterns of these characters in this place. From beginning to end, the novel is rivetingly narrated, building scene by scene its depiction of the hardships and necessities these minors struggled with and against in 1922 Western, PA -- their heroic attempt to unionize against the dark forces of Capitalist exploitation pitted against them. The central character, Chester Pistakowski, is a worthy hero as he negotiates--breathlessly-- his struggles against those obstacles. Highly recommended.
July 23, 2020
Like an heir to Phillip Bonosky's Burning Valley, Damian Dressick's 40 Patchtown is gritty and poetic; a page turner filled with singing vernacular. The 1922 coal miner's strike in Windber, Pennsylvania feels all to familiar in our current times of political, economic and ethnic division. Chet Pistakowsky, the hero of the novel, narrates with a strong, consistent in-the-moment voice. This is a story that assaults your senses. It takes hold of you from page one and doesn't let go until the very end.
March 14, 2026
How to put into words what this book meant to me. It was utterly devastating in the most important way: an honest account of what our ancestors had to go through to give us future generations a better life. Before this book, I heard about the strikes and stories of people being thrown out of their houses but NOTHING compares to reading through someone experiencing this. Everyday was a hardship: who should I sacrifice myself to in order to take care of my family? What part of my soul will I sell today to the greediest scum just to make ends meet, ensure my families survival?
The whole way through you’re just hoping, praying that Chet will get revenge on the people that wronged him and for the people he loved. And in a way he does, but not in the way you expect. The ending, like I already said, was devastatingly bittersweet. A reminder that oftentimes there was no happy ending for coal miners, that it would take multiple strikes for them to be half treated like human beings.
Today, I find this story especially important. Our current
administration is branding coal as “clean coal” a disgusting attempt to romanticize an industry that claimed hundred of thousands of innocent lives. People today have forgotten our roots, how we got here today, upset over the littlest things while a hundred years ago our ancestors were forced to live in tents, sleep on the ground and eat acorn mush just to get a fair wage. This work is everything we need to be reminded of today. Do not let the present erase this history. We cannot forget those who suffered before us. The coal industry supported many people, but it abused them too and we cannot push that out of the narrative.
Especially because, today in Pennsylvania, we still pay the price for our natural resources. It may look a little different, the impacts may be better hidden and we might have more stable roofs of our heads. But many of us continue to bear the burden of industry while the people in power continue to abuse the communities they rely on.
Sometimes history isn’t history.
I want to end this by saying how beautifully this was written, you can tell the author Damian Dressick spent his time researching this. You can tell this story was from the heart. As someone who also has family that worked in the coal mines, reading this felt like justice. Justice for those whose lives and voices were sought to be cruelly erased from history. Thank you for giving them a voice.
The whole way through you’re just hoping, praying that Chet will get revenge on the people that wronged him and for the people he loved. And in a way he does, but not in the way you expect. The ending, like I already said, was devastatingly bittersweet. A reminder that oftentimes there was no happy ending for coal miners, that it would take multiple strikes for them to be half treated like human beings.
Today, I find this story especially important. Our current
administration is branding coal as “clean coal” a disgusting attempt to romanticize an industry that claimed hundred of thousands of innocent lives. People today have forgotten our roots, how we got here today, upset over the littlest things while a hundred years ago our ancestors were forced to live in tents, sleep on the ground and eat acorn mush just to get a fair wage. This work is everything we need to be reminded of today. Do not let the present erase this history. We cannot forget those who suffered before us. The coal industry supported many people, but it abused them too and we cannot push that out of the narrative.
Especially because, today in Pennsylvania, we still pay the price for our natural resources. It may look a little different, the impacts may be better hidden and we might have more stable roofs of our heads. But many of us continue to bear the burden of industry while the people in power continue to abuse the communities they rely on.
Sometimes history isn’t history.
I want to end this by saying how beautifully this was written, you can tell the author Damian Dressick spent his time researching this. You can tell this story was from the heart. As someone who also has family that worked in the coal mines, reading this felt like justice. Justice for those whose lives and voices were sought to be cruelly erased from history. Thank you for giving them a voice.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 19, 2022
If you live anywhere near Windber or Johnstown, PA, you might enjoy this story of the 1922 miners' strike in Windber. Damian Dressick uses historical fiction to to tell about the event in such a way that is is hard to separate the history from the fiction. I found this story of the Pistakowski family very engaging. The names of the families are all familiar Johnstown/Windber names. It's a small book but a mighty story.
March 19, 2024
Such a great story set in Pennsylvania coal country. Anyone thinking we have it tough now, needs to read this book.
The writing is excellent and the characters are so well drawn I could picture all of them. This would be a great movie. There’s an omg shocker and several villains and I couldn’t imagine how he was going to end it but no worries, very satisfying. Highly recommend this one.
The writing is excellent and the characters are so well drawn I could picture all of them. This would be a great movie. There’s an omg shocker and several villains and I couldn’t imagine how he was going to end it but no worries, very satisfying. Highly recommend this one.
July 19, 2020
Well-paced coming-of-age story about a boy forced to grow up too fast amidst a mining strike in 1920s Pennsylvania coal country. An engrossing page-turner.
February 18, 2024
Great storytelling and local flavor. Written as only someone who put a lot of work and heart into knowing the material could. I’ll watch for more from the author.
January 31, 2025
Great storytelling with some heavy-hitting scenes. Thoroughly enjoyed this.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews