STEELTON a Novel

As he plans his civilian life after his Army hitch, Korean War Veteran Harry Burger aspires to escape his family’s row home hard by his hometown’s imposing steel mill. The obvious choice, returning to his union job, is not for Harry. He wants to join the emerging middle class as a professional. His younger brother, Tim, enjoys success without seeming to work for it-a mystery to Harry. Hidden behind the ordinary, the routine, an unlikely alliance of partners in crime is providing Tim with plenty of cash: a politically powerful businessman, an enigmatic police chief, a government employee who controls a vast liquor business, and a small-time hoodlum who squeezes a living on the fringes of organized crime.A sprawling steel mill, and the proud town that surrounds it binds the residents together as they make their decisions to get what they want – or to keep what they have. One neighborhood in that town, the West Side, is a microcosm of Steelton: the strivers, the street-smart, those who have given up, and those who have settled for less. The pace of the everyday, the rise and fall of love affairs, the making of reputations, and the making of steel all take place in Steelton.As the story unfolds, questions arise: Do their choices matter? How is success defined? How is loyalty measured? What rules are to be followed? In Steelton, it depends….