Djuro Kracha Later he works in the steel mills. Eventually he starts his own business, a butcher shop. His first wife, Elena, dies; his second wife, Zuska, leaves him, and he ends up losing everything he has. He lives out his final years with his grandson Johnny “Dobie” Dobrejcak and Johnny’s wife, Julie.

The impotence of steel workers to improve their lot in the face of the unshakable power of the steel bosses and the Republican Party leads him to despair, and he eventually dies in a mill accident, a victim of the latter groups’ greed.

She is therefore the third tragic figure in Bell’s story, as the stress of widowhood and the ceaseless work just to make ends meet takes a heavy toll on her health. She contracts Spanish influenza and/or consumption and spends a year in a sanitarium, where she dies before reaching the age of forty.

Kracha

Yes, this is a historical novel about immigration in the late 19C and early 20C. Based on the author’s own family story, its historical accuracy is impressive.

Why are some of the company’s workers fired during the election year? The workers wont follow the company’s voting directive.

​The Historical fiction novel, Out of This Furnace, was written by Thomas bell to illustrate the steel industry in America between the 1880s and 1930s. The four main characters focused on George Kracha, Mike Dobrejcak, Mary Dobrejcak, and Johnny “Dobie” Dobrejcak.

George Kracha is an immigrant who leaves Hungarian-ruled Slovakia in 1881 to seek work in western Pennsylvania, where his relatives reside. Kracha eventually moves with his family first to Homestead and then to Braddock, where he gets a job in a steel mill. …

Between 1870 and 1900, the largest number of immigrants continued to come from northern and western Europe including Great Britain, Ireland, and Scandinavia. But “new” immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were becoming one of the most important forces in American life.