I found this book interesting and informative about the lives of this particular family of mill workers in the time period of the book. My family is from the area and I had relatives who worked in these same mills so I felt like I learned something about my own family history. Although, most of the mills mentioned in the book are gone, Homestead Works has been changed into a large planned shopping area with restaurants, businesses, apartments, and a walking trail along the water with signs which depict what the area used to look like during the late 19th and early 20th century. There are few steel mills left in Pittsburgh as well as other areas in this country and some of the steel is now produced in Europe, ironically, in Slovakia. It is hard to believe the living/working conditions that these people lived/worked in and how they managed to survive. Because of the discrimination faced by the Slovak and other cultures at the time, it is unfortunate that the native language were somewhat lost through the generations due to the immigrants wanting their children to learn English and leave their native language behind to become more Americanized. I did think that the descriptions of all of the different unions was confusing and, after having our book club discussion, most of the other members felt the same way. Although the book was slow, it was very informative and made more personal by making it about the types of people you would find at the time and I would recommend it to other book clubs interested in the history of the steel mills and the how the immigrants lived/worked who came over from eastern Europe.