Steel Summer

About the Book

World War II has crashed into violent action. The June, 1942 Battle of Midway is keeping American in fearful suspense. And Frank Bannon, college student, scion of a middle-class Irish family, is starting his second summer as a laborer in "Big Steels" Carnegie-Illinois South Works, in South Chicago.

With young men going to was, the mill is hiring women to perform clerical work even in the all-male manufacturing divisions. That fateful June 6, Bannon meets Elena Lanauskas, beautiful daughter of a South Work maintenance man. Elena and another newly hired girl are taking a "guided tour" of the block-long No.3 Opening Hearth Building. The guide is Art Frost, the department superintendent.

For Bannon, Elena's beauty and apparent approachability stirs serious yearnings. For other among the Open Hearth's crew of summer laborers, Elena becomes the subject of ribald speculation. For Patrick "Paddy" Culhane, bon vivant, boxer, and self-styled Don Juan, the new office worker becomes a target for conquest.

Two laborers make a wager, Culhane creates social opportunities to become acquainted with Elena, a rape takes place, and Elena, finding herself pregnant and in love with Bannon, comes face to face with disgrace and family ostracism.

In her devastation, convent-educated Elena confides in her twin brother Paul. Fearful that he will take his revenge by killing Culhane, Paul stages his own death and disappears, having joined the U/ S. Army. The "death" touches off a wild sequence of events. Culhane comes under suspicion in Paul's death. Faced with the war-production need to keep his summer crew together until Labor Day, Superintendent Frost makes a deal with Culhane: the latter will work "Double shifts", or 16 hour daily, and Frost will protect the boxer.

In love now with Elena, Bannon has received his military induction notice. He will report for duty immediately after Labor Day. Fearful that he will lose her, he proposes marriage. She remains determined to make Culhane responsible for his child. When Culhane dies under suspicious circumstances arranged by Elena's older brother, an open-hearth foreman, Elena feels in a perverse sense liberated. The curtain of the story comes down on Elena and Bannon, provisionally married, as they enjoy their last hours before Bannon's departure. They will wed formally on his return from service.

The Grossness, the passions, the cruelties, and the violence of the wartime universe of steel come alive in the gripping story of two people from different social strata who find one another despite seemingly endless obstacles. From another perspective, the book represents a remarkable exploration of how a crucible of environmental decadence may nurture the tendrils of an underlying union.

About the Author

In 1941 and 1942 William F. Keefe, then a callow liberal and law student studying for a degree before the U. S. Army claimed his services, worked in the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corporation's South Works plant on Chicago's South Side. His title: summer laborer. After serving in the U.S. Army and the USIA from 1943-1954, primarily in Germany, he worked as a free-lance writer in Spain and the United States. Back in Chicago, he labored in the writing vineyard as an encyclopedia editor and communications consultant form 1961-1967, when he found his own organization, Action Research Institute, specializing in consulting and phases of writing and research. Mr. Keefe has more than 25 books to his credit.