is a work of
gripping fiction rooted in fact. It is a story of love, hate and
revolution, of heroes and villains. In the late eighteen/early
nineteen hundreds thousands of poor but hopeful immigrant coal
miners, railroaded to the Colorado/New Mexico border, found themselves
and their families in a hostile environment. Forced to work under
deplorable conditions for next to nothing, they fought back. It
is this story and the story of the powerfully wealthy men who
tried to drive them to do their bidding.
Charles Winslow,
the wealthy railroad man / mine owner, and his family are products
of my imagination as are most characters in the novel including
the Slovak powder-man, Leos Nemcova and his son, born on the docks
of NYC in the blizzard of 1888. In the storm's fury the boy's
mother, Frederica Arial, a strikingly beautiful, manipulative
woman, abandons her son and husband. Frederica will stop at nothing
to achieve monetary goals in her new world. The story traces all
of their lives to Trinidad Colorado. Black John, George Metaxas,
King Trec, Hector Finnigan and the Sol Bertilina family are among
the book's fictional characters. From the fabulously wealthy to
the wretchedly poor these people are as real as the atrocities
committed by them and against them were real: as the tragic revolution
those atrocities spawned was real.
In the telling
I fictionalize historical figures instrumental in the story's
plot. Winslow's and Rockefeller's cold-blooded mine superintendent,
LM Bowers, is an example. (Bowers telegrams to Junior Rockefeller
and Mr. Junior's replies are authenticated and on record in the
Trinidad, Colorado Public Library.) Louis Tikis, Sheriff Farr,
Monty Linderfelt, the Fighting Greeks and the Black Hand Committee
were real people and real organizations plucked from Raton NM.
and Trinidad CO. history of that time
Before and while
writing FIREDAMP I spent weeks listening to those who lived through
that era or whose parents lived through it. At the age of eleven,
my friend Gabe Lucero went to work in the mines of Dawson, New
Mexico. (Gabe's father and brothers were killed in Dawson Mines
disasters.) I interviewed Congressman Judge, J. Edgar Chenowith
of Trinidad who as a boy in 1914 stood on the street corner when
the women marched in protest to free the 82 year old Mother Jones.
(She was incarcerated under orders issued by LM Bowers.) I read
reams of newsprint, biased and unbiased, published during these
troubled times. I gleaned much first-hand information from Papa
John Oborosoler, my daughters' great grandfather, who left the
mines to raise his family on Johnson Mesa. Papa John was delivering
vegetables to strikers in the tent city of Ludlow the day Bowers'
hand- picked militia opened fire. The people in the Public Library
of Trinidad were an immense help. Peter Collier & David Horowitz's
book, THE ROCKEFELLERS gave me historical insight. I used all
of this to spur my imagination.
Ben Zeller April,
2002
A REVIEW
Firedamp by Ben
Zeller
Rebecca
New Mexico (11/8/2003)
Firedamp, Ben
Zeller’s second novel, is fast moving, often brilliant and
always engrossing. Firedamp (a miner’s term for the deadly,
flammable methane gas generated in underground coal mines) is
unsurpassed in its touching honesty, originality and pathos. The
narrative flows easily. The characters are fully developed.
Firedamp is set
in the late eighteen/early nineteen hundreds, a time in history
of the inflammatory miners revolution in the coal-rich territory
surrounding Trinidad, Colorado and Raton, New Mexico. Zeller,
a resident of Raton, obviously spent months searching out the
facts of the unprecedented and avoidable mine disasters of that
time and area. But let me state up front, this is not a boring
history book. This is a novel of legends, power, bigotry, immense
greed, ignorance, knowledge, raw sex, passionate love and intimate
understanding. It spans the continent of Europe, from which many
of the characters originate, and continues across the United States.
The novel is honed by a sharp sense of earthy philosophy.
Mr. Zeller is
a master storyteller. From the back cover: “In 1880, Charles
Winslow, railroad baron, rancher, industrialist, stakes out a
vast kingdom on the wild Colorado/New Mexico border.” …
taking advantage of cheep labor of the time … “He railroads
in thousands of poor immigrants to mine his rich underground coal
deposits: among them, Leos Nemcova.” Falsely accused of murder,
explosive expert, Nemcova, flees the coalfields of Bohemia for
the United States where jobs are plentiful, promises golden and
few questions asked. Waiting furtively for weeks for cheep passage
at the German port of Hamburg he encounters a darkly beautiful
Angelina Frederica. Wrapped in heavy winter robes, to mask her
unwanted pregnancy, the lady (herself on the run) desperately
needs cover and money for passage. She bewitches the big Slovack
convincing him to marry her and pay her passage. Insisting the
union not be consummated until their arrival in “her new
world” she leads him aboard the steamer, Yankee Passage.
They arrive in New York in the brutal arms of the blizzard of
1888.
On the cold earth
floor of an immigration warehouse Angelina gives birth. She leaves
the tiny, prematurely born boy in the helpless arms of the powder
man. Her son is the novel’s chief catalyst. Arriving at the
Trinidad coal mines the baby is discovered in his presumed father’s
carpetbag. Winslow, a widower, takes the boy to the ranch and
raises him with his son and daughter of the same age. As the children
cross the threshold of puberty explicit awkward yet touchingly
sensitive sexual scenes depict the growing love of the young Leos
Nemcova and Sarah Winslow, his adopted sister. His unknown and
unmentioned mother, Angelina Frederica, sexually molested at the
age of twelve by her Prussian father, desperately searches “her
new world” for love. She finds it with Megan Cooper, the
wife of a wealthy sea captain. “In her dressing room that
morning, the person who touched her was not a man wanting to crawl
over her body like an army on the march … It excited her.
Megan’s touch had been exacting. Her fingers were precise
and understanding…”
When the older
Megan is taken from her by cancer, the distraught Freddy plunges
into the business she inherits. She whips her company, Cooper’s
Sea, into a multi million-dollar enterprise. Her own fortune now
secured, she branches out buying into other business, always with
her golden touch. Unwittingly, she became embroiled in the dwindling
fortune of the Winslow Mine Co. There, she meets Sarah. Frederica
falls in love for the second time in her life. This time, however,
she is the older woman. And Sarah is the adopted sister of her
unknown son.
Firedamp follows
the lives of these and other fictitious and historical characters
from the brothels and coalmines of Europe to the rocky mountain
peaks of Colorado. The novel resolves in a people’s revolution
that moved the world with its explosive conclusion: The Ludlow
Massacre. Although the author does not stick strictly to the historic
facts of the case, history adds a frost of reality to the cold
truth he portrays. Many of the players in this vividly constructed
novel are true figures of the time. The main characters, however,
are drawn from the author’s imagination and that imagination
builds a masterpiece that will hold you to the final word …
It will keep you thinking for weeks to come. You won’t put
this book down. Firedamp is a novel like Gone With The Wind. It
is not a throwaway. It will be read again and again.
