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In the winter of 1983, after spending most of his life working around the forges at Larmel Steel, 40-year-old Red Baker is summarily laid off. With a much cheaper workforce overseas, the company’s six-month shutdown is rumored to be permanent. Baker’s life is turned upside down in an instant. Possessing only “nontransferable skills,” his ordeal at the unemployment office offers no hope. With a wife and teenage son to support, Baker moves from one short-lived minimum wage job to another, becoming increasingly dejected. Things turn from bad to worse: A former coworker in the same predicament commits suicide, and in the same week, Baker’s wife, Wanda, and his mistress — a go-go dancer named Crystal — both leave him. Increasingly popping pills and drinking hard liquor to cope, Baker turns to one desperate criminal act…

Praise for Red Baker

“Mr. Ward writes with a directness and sincerity that is increasingly rare in these days of fashionable irony and high-tech literary pyrotechnics…The reader…really does want to know what happens.”
-Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

“A truly awesome achievement, a paean of power and intensity directed toward a too often forgotten group, those American refugees so cruelly displaced by the raw greed and economic convulsions in the heavy steel industry. Red Baker is a remarkable novel.”
-James Crumley, author of The Last Good Kiss

“They may not build ‘em like they used to, but Red Baker is a product that any working fella can damn well be proud of.” -Time