This Book Review originally appeared in The Post & Courier, July 17, 2005

MUSIC OF THE MILL. By Luis J. Rodriguez. 308 pages. Rayo. $24.95.

Nazareth Steel, a sprawling mass of forges, dies, hearths, and furnaces that goes on for block after block in the industrial heart of post-World War II Los Angeles, with buildings a hundred feet tall and a quarter mile long, dies in the second third of “Music of Mill.”

It remains, nonetheless, a central character of the book, around which the lives of so many others depend.  Johnny Salcido tells his children as they watch the glowing red-orange flow from behind the chain-link fence at the periphery: “It’s a mean, hot, dangerous place. But this is what feeds you.”

The story encloses Johnny’s life fully.  It opens with his father, Procopio, leaving Yaqui country in the north of Mexico.  The vast Sonoran desert behind him, he journeys to the copper mines of Arizona, and later to California, and industry.  Johnny’s childhood in the barrio, early rebellion, and time in correctional facilities give way to an older, more mature Johnny who takes his place alongside Procopio in the mill.  A natural leader, he is drawn to union efforts at social justice and equality.  Much of his life is spent struggling for fairness for all peoples in the microcosm that is the steel mill.  Until, one day, the mill is gone.

The final third plays like a coda to the “Music of the Mill.”  Johnny’s daughter, Azucena, must find a way in her own tangle of barrio, early motherhood, drugs, and directionless energy.  It is ultimately a path of rediscovery, leading toward the ties to nature with which the book opened.  The novel thus travels in a satisfying circular path. 

The words flow fast, immediate, through much of the book.  Some of the speeches and explanations grow long near the end.  Pain and beauty, choice and necessity, the connectedness and individuality of people: this is a book to remember and revisit.

 Reviewer Jason A. Zwiker is a freelance writer based in Charleston.

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