“My
efforts to contribute to the aspirations of the working class began with
writing novels about hospital workers….(In)the majority of stories that were
published in books or aired in movies or on television, the heroes were doctors or psychiatrists....The service workers who
maintained the institution and provided most of the services were either absent
from the plot, window dressing or foils for the professional classes.” (Tim
Sheard, “Insurgent Publishing for the Resistance,” Hard Ball Press, https://hardballpress.com
I’ll
be ever’where-wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can
eat. I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there…An’
when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build-why,
I’ll be there. (John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Penguin edition, 1992, 419).I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good…Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood…(Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez,” https://www.woodyguthrie.org).
There is a long and rich tradition of storytelling and
singing songs that reflect the reality of working people’s lives. The better
ones inform and inspire people to action. And whole publishers have tried to
bring these stories and songs to a mass audience. International Publishers,
West End Press, the Feminist Press and others, particularly in the last third
of the twentieth century, have struggled to keep this tradition alive. In the
musical world, People’s Songs, Broadside, and Sing Out represent efforts to
communicate working class music to newer audiences. But with the rising
cultural hegemony of films, cable television, electronic songs and stories, and
the mass-marketing of electronically downloadable fiction and non-fiction, the
viability of outlets for working class culture has been made more difficult at
a time when we need Steinbecks and Guthries more than ever.
In 2001, Tim Sheard published his first mystery novel
about hospital shop steward, Lenny Moss, This
Won’t Hurt a Bit. Sheard then
established Hard Ball Press, which published seven more Lenny Moss novels. Hard
Ball press has expanded its offerings, including a new mystery by activist Bill
Fletcher which addresses race in New England, numerous children’s books, and an
engaging biography of Herbert and Joan March, organizers of the United
Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA-CIO) in Chicago. A shop steward and hospital custodian, Lenny Moss, returns in Tim Sheard’s latest mystery novel, One Foot in the Grave. In this latest encounter, Moss assists hospital workers to solve the attempted murder of a popular staff doctor. The adventure reads like a classic well-timed narrative about an attempted murder and the almost desperate efforts to save the intended victim.
This gripping mystery story is overlaid with a rich
description of work life in the James Madison Hospital. Hospital administrators
are motivated not by serving the ill or providing a rich and constructive work
environment for the custodial workers, nurses, laboratory technicians, or
doctors, but by profit. The novel describes “speed-up” on the job, including
nurses and doctors assigned greater numbers of patients, and extended hours of
overtime rather than hiring adequate staff. The worsening conditions of work
are made more complicated by a virulent Zika epidemic that has hit the city of
Philadelphia. Additional patients are added to an already overloaded hospital.
Hospital workers are forced to treat patients contaminated by the spreading
epidemic. Some pregnant nurses, who are devoted to their jobs, are being forced
to treat Zika patients even though scientists believe exposure to patients
infected with this new highly contagious strain could cause birth defects.
It is in the context of worker exploitation, threats
of firings, exposure to disease, and a voiceless and demeaned work force, that
Lenny Moss steps up to encourage the organization of a staff union for the
nurses. Organizing is complicated by gaps between nurses who see themselves as
professionals without shared interest with custodial workers despite the clear
reality, recognized by the custodials, that greater strength would be achieved
by unity among all hospital workers.
All of this, the murder mystery, the analysis of the
hospital as a workplace, the struggles between labor and capital, the emergence
of a crisis imposed by the epidemic provide a rich reading experience:
entertainment, education, inspiration, and empathy for the hospital workers.
The Lenny Moss series, and virtually all the Hard Ball Press offerings, suggest
that characters like Lenny Moss, are modern day working class heroes such as
Tom Joad, who will be wherever working people are suffering and in struggle, or
Woody Guthrie, who hates a song or a story that puts people down and makes them
think they are no good.
Reading the latest Lenny Moss novel, really all of
them, will entertain, educate, and inspire.
