Thunder on the Mountain: A Novel of 1936 Hemlock County Horror Book Review

The western Pennsylvania oil country is the historic area where the American oil industry was founded: it spawned Standard Oil, John D. Rockefeller’s fortune, and perhaps even the Sherman antitrust laws, as well as generations of labor strife.  It is, therefore, one of the cradles of discontent in contemporary America.

  In Thunder on the Mountain, Poyer revisits the terrible winter of 1936 when a strike to organize the workers in the Thunder Oil Company is called after a refinery disaster exposes the company’s contempt for workers’ safety. W.T. “Kid Nitro” Halvorsen, a young boxer and well shooter, becomes a leader of the strike against Daniel Thunner’s beloved family company.  The strike draws national attention, which increases with the arrival of ruthless strikebreaker Pearl Deatherage and of determined CIO organizer Doris Gurley Golden.  As the unrest spreads in scale and fury, Halvorsen and Thunner must put their ideas of honor and morality to the test.  In a high-stakes game of one-upmanship and violence, who will prove himself kin of the mountain?

  Packed with insight, vivid characters, and a burning concern for justice, Thunder on the Mountain is a tough, penetrating, violent novel in the tradition of Jack London, John Steinbeck, E.L. Doctorow, and Mary Lee Settle-and, now, David Poyer.