Crippled Jack by Boston Teran

This story of post-Civil War westward expansion focuses on society’s growing pains when robber barons exploited both natural resources and labor in the silver mines of Colorado. The tale begins when a palsy-stricken young boy is left to die in barren wasteland but survives when he is found by the “Coffin Maker,” an angel of death who avenges the subjugated masses. The boy grows into “Crippled Jack,” an expert marksman who assumes the Coffin Maker’s social justice mantle. Crippled Jack’s journey intersects with those of Nola, a principled young newspaperwoman, and Mary Jones, a firebrand speaker against oppressive labor practices.

The powerful narrative unfolds the plight of downtrodden workers like those who toil at a Leadville mine where smoke-blackened “runoff down the hillface looked like blood that had rusted over.” Bearing witness to atrocities instills in Jack, Nola and Mary an unshakeable conviction for their cause. But their passion for real, lasting change comes with a foreboding sense that Leadville might be their final challenge, since bloodshed is inevitable when confronting powerful magnates and their legions of Pinkertons. Far from a genre Western, critical events from 19th-century Leadville labor strife provide rich historical backdrop for this heavily fictionalized account that strives for a moral reckoning that surely wasn’t achieved in the cases of many of the workers on whose backs our nation expanded. Words come with a directness in quick chapter scenes that build a timeless-feeling story of the men and women on opposite sides, the oppressors and the oppressed, and propel it to a powerful conclusion. Boston Teran is a pseudonym used for 15 books in 20-plus-year career during which the writer’s real identity has never been revealed.