Volume 2 of the Two Volume Paperback & Kindle Set
When a major recession hits the country in 1921, Haskell (along with tens of thousands of other rubber workers in Akron) is thrown out of a job. Recently married and with his family back in Kentucky depending upon his income, he and his wife, Florence, retreat back home. In this concluding volume of On A Burning Deck, Florence supports the family by teaching school. And Haskell hits the road West in search of work.
Along the way, he hops freight trains, sleeps in boxcars, runs from the police and stumbles into the middle of a manhunt for an escaped killer in the Memphis rail yards. Fortunately, he eventually finds work as a motorman on the streetcars in Paducah, Kentucky, where he gets to know the Prohibition-era bootleggers, hookers and treasury agents before returning to the rubber factories of Akron, Ohio.
In time, Haskell and his growing family will weather the Depression, the Goodyear strike of 1936 and World War II. Before retiring, he will serve as the entire police department of Tallmadge, Ohio, receive F.B.I. training, organize the volunteer fire department, serve as a city councilman and run for mayor. The boy who grew up as a dirt-poor hillbilly will usher in changes to his community that the residents still enjoy today.
And that, perhaps, is the best hillbilly elegy of all.