Linda Decicco

The Bitter Harvest Linda Decicco

Killing a man in a bar fight in Pittsburgh sends 16-year-old Giuseppe on a train going west. Relatives in South Bend, Indiana, finagle a job for him in the middle of the Depression. The year is 1935 and the factory is Studebaker, the legendary carmaker. Spoiled by his mother, Giuseppe is not used to the hard work at the plant's foundry, but he flourishes under the care of these well-meaning relatives - until a visit from the mother he left in Pittsburgh, who simply cannot stay away from the son that she loves more than her own husband. The bar fight that made him a fugitive wouldn't have been such a surprise if his parents had known about his parallel life - running numbers since he was 12 for the bookies down at the bar in Pittsburgh. Now in South Bend, he finds his way into another unsavory situation. An after-hours job at the cigar shop turns out to be a front for the gambling, liquor and prostitution business run by the Outfit from Chicago. His aunt crunches numbers for Studebaker by day - and for Local 5 of the United Auto Workers by night. His uncle is working on a new car, the Champion - a Trojan Horse that Studebaker is rolling out in hopes that the company can climb its way from the brink of bankruptcy. Union activities and manufacturing woes are all part of this story of immigrants and the American Dream. Any dream Giuseppe harbors is shattered when the guys from Chicago put a gun in his hand. This is the second novel in the trilogy called The Crossing.