Rust: A Memoir of Steel and Grit - Softcover

Goldbach, Eliese Colette

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1250239419 ISBN 13: 9781250239419

Publisher: Flatiron Books, 2021

Synopsis

"Elements of Tara Westover's Educated... The mill comes to represent something holy to [Eliese] because it is made not of steel but of people."
--New York Times Book Review

One woman's story of working in the backbreaking steel industry to rebuild her life--but what she uncovers in the mill is much more than molten metal and grueling working conditions. Under the mill's orange flame she finds hope for the unity of America.

Steel is the only thing that shines in the belly of the mill...

To ArcelorMittal Steel Eliese is known as #6691: Utility Worker, but this was never her dream. Fresh out of college, eager to leave behind her conservative hometown and come to terms with her Christian roots, Eliese found herself applying for a job at the local steel mill. The mill is everything she was trying to escape, but it's also her only shot at financial security in an economically devastated and forgotten part of America.

In Rust, Eliese Colette Goldbach brings the reader inside the belly of the mill and the middle American upbringing that brought her there in the first place. She takes a long and intimate look at her Rust Belt childhood and struggles to reconcile her desire to leave without turning her back on the people she's come to love. The people she sees as the unsung backbone of our nation.

Faced with the financial promise of a steelworker's paycheck, and the very real danger of working in an environment where a steel coil could crush you at any moment or a vat of molten iron could explode because of a single drop of water, Eliese finds unexpected warmth and camaraderie among the gruff men she labors beside each day.

Appealing to readers of Hillbilly Elegy and Educated, Rust is a story of the humanity Eliese discovers in the most unlikely and hellish of places, and the hope that therefore begins to grow.

About this title

About the Author

Eliese Colette Goldbach is a steelworker at the ArcelorMittal Cleveland Temper Mill. She received an MFA in nonfiction from the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts Program. Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Western Humanities Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and Best American Essays 2017. She received the Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Award and a Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant from the Ohioana Library Association, which is given to a young Ohio writer of promise.

Edition details

• Publisher: Flatiron Books
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1250239419
• ISBN 13: 9781250239419
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320