Bob Reed, Author
Wonder how a writer from Texas came to publish a novel about a coal war in Colorado during the 100th-year anniversary of the tragedy—and that novel became the basis for a trilogy that spans the Twentieth Century?
American lit and creative writing teacher Bob Reed stumbled on the deadliest and most costly labor dispute in American history by accident. Thinking he'd write something about farming in eastern Colorado where his father had been stationed during WW II, in 1983, Reed ran across a brief encyclopedia reference to the "the Ludlow Massacre." A massacre? On the plains of Southeastern Colorado?
The hook was in. Bob visited the coal canyons and the UMW memorial site. In the nearby burgh of Trinidad, where he hoped to interview descendants of miners, he discovered the lips of the townspeople sealed as tightly as the mine entrances in the coal canyons. References to coal mining in the area hardly existed, even in the town's museum. Finally, a librarian in Trinidad's Carnegie Library directed Reed to microfiche containing local and national newspaper accounts of the tragedy. He was on his way.
In a used bookstore in Santa Fe, Bob unearthed a copy of The Great Coalfield War by George McGovern. Later the same year, he acquired Buried Unsung, Zeese Papanikolas' classic biography of strike leader Louis Tikas. At the Denver Public Library, he donned white gloves and beheld photographs depicting the lives of miners, the UMW-led strike and its tragic outcome. One image of armed strikers sparked Bob's imagination: there, left of center, stood a short, flinty young man. He held a Winchester, wore a pistol. Bob knew nothing about him except that he was a miner on strike. As fabrication melded with research, that young man became Bob's narrator and eye-witness, Alan Tanner.
Photo Courtesy of Denver Public Library, Western History Collection
During the writing process, the words from Billy Edd Wheeler's lament" Red-Winged Blackbird" rang in the Bob's ears: "Oh, can't you see that pretty little bird/Singing with all of his heart and soul?/He's got a blood-red spot on his wing/And all the rest of him's black as coal."
Bob's thirty-year journey through history's fog resulted in The Red-Winged Blackbird, a novel one miner's descendent described as the "go-to" book if you really want to experience the clash between miners and the coal companies.
One wonders, though, what took the author so long to publish this story.
"I write slowly," Bob jokes. "I knew I had thirty years from the time I started until the prime marketing year of the anniversary. No need to get in a big hurry and make mistakes."
The Red-Winged Blackbird was worth the wait. But the call for more of the story was sounding.
“I’d become so interested in these people and how their lives and their descendents’ lives would develop, I couldn’t stay away.”
Two more novels emerged. The first, Between Daylight and Dark, chronicles the life and times of direct descendent of Ludlow Llewelyn “Lulu” Broiles Tanner, from 1922-1946. This “Dickensean” novel takes Lulu, her friends and family, through the aftermat of WW I, the Depression, Dust Bowl and World War II. Part One depicts her experiences growing up on a ranch that sat across the road from where the Ludlow Massacre occurred; Part Two takes Lulu to Colorado Springs, home of Camp Carson Army base, to join her girlhood friend as roommate and confidant. While working as a waitress in a diner popular with service men, Lulu meets Gene Pomeroy, a wounded combat veteran who has persuaded the Army to let him remain in the service to help train recruits in the use of mules to transport artillery pieces in mountainous areas.
The third novel, Glitches, finds Lulu living in Empyrean, Texas (Gene’s hometown) as the former farming and ranching community confronts the challenges of growth in 1983. Conceived on the night of the Ludlow Massacre, as described in The Red-Winged Blackbird, reared on a ranch in Southwestern Colorado, surviving the Depression, the Dust Bown and WWII, as depicted in her memoir Between Daylight and Dark, the doyenne of Empyrean figures she’s faced about all that life can throw at a person. But little has prepared the septuagenarian for the comedy of errors that will entwine her and eleven family members and friends during Founders’ Weekend on “Silicone Prairie.” Will these adventurers succumb to pitfalls they’ve helped create or transcend them? Readers will discover the surprising answers in the rousing conclusion to the Red Wing Trilogy.