Picket Line Blues – Prelude to a Riot
By Nino E. Green
In Nino Green’s novel, Picket Line Blues, the announcement of a multi-million dollar paper mill expansion in a small, northern Minnesota town is delivered with the punch line of a cruel joke. The new construction has been awarded to a company whose non-union workers will be coming to town in vehicles with Mississippi, Alabama, Louisana, and Arkansas license plates. Although a fraction of the work is given to local subcontractors, union tradesmen station pickets at the construction gate and refuse to work with non-union labor. The Minnesota picketers are joined by union members from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the strike continues until frustrated and angered by the futility of picketing, the strike erupts into a riot.
Picket Line Blues is a story of the 1989 strike and riot at Boise-Cascade’s paper mill in International Falls. The story is told by fictional union leaders and members, their non-union southern rivals, corporate managers and officers, law enforcement officials, lawyers, and others.
Green is the author of two previously published collections of short stories, Justice on the Line and Risking Justice. He has lived and practiced law in the Upper Peninsula for more than fifty years.
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Reviews
“I love this book! It is engaging about the ins and outs of the strike gone bad. What was great about the book is that it takes the point of view from the strikers, union workers, corporations, and everyone so you get to see both sides of the stories and draw out your own unbiased conclusions.” – Michael Rock