The Marion Massacre by Mike Lawing (Wasteland Press paperback). In 1929, northern textile workers made about $20 per week, while Carolinas’ millhands’ made $7. So the Carolinas’ workers struck. Although the Gastonia Strike of 1929, during which the sheriff and a strike leader were killed, is a permanent part of international labor lore, an even deadlier strike took place that year in Marion but has largely been forgotten. Marion millworkers, fed up with being told to do more work for less money, walked out, thereby splitting the town into two bitterly opposed factions. Tensions grew until in October, a heavily armed, hurriedly organized sheriff’s posse opened fire on strikers and killed seven of them. A mill owner commended the sheriff for his efficiency: seven millworkers were dead, with only 35 bullets unaccounted for. Lawing, whose family is from Marion, tells the tale well and fills it out with accounts of the difficulty of getting anyone to talk about the massacre, and he tracks the rise of some of the “winning” figures through the ranks of NC politics. Mike Lawing will read and sign copies of The Marion Massacre Saturday at Barnes & Noble at the Arboretum from 1 to 4pm. — John Grooms
The Way We Die Now by Charles Willeford (Vintage Crime paperback). These days, crime novels about south Florida are a dime a dozen, but Charles Willeford, who died in 1988, was one of the first to tackle the subject, and one of the best. Vintage Crime has reissued several of Willeford’s series featuring detective Hoke Mosley, The Way We Die Now being the author’s last. It’s a near-chaotic story of multiple murders, cruel farmers, Haitian immigrants and Mosley’s wide-open family life. Willeford was a meticulous, detailed writer and the sweat fairly drips off the page as he offers a glimpse into the hot, racially conflicted underbelly of Miami and its environs. A first-rate mystery by a justly rediscovered writer. — Dana Renaldi
This article appears in Sep 7-13, 2005.