Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Filmmaker and novelist Sayles (To Save the Man) brings the lives of Brazilian and American workers into focus in this sprawling panorama of the Ford Motor Company between the 1920s and '40s. On the eve of the Great Depression, Henry Ford launches a scheme to grow his own rubber on a massive plantation in the Brazilian rainforest called Fordlandia. A local rubber tapper named João is hired to work in Fordlandia, where he and his family encounter an American family whose father, Jim, has been sent by the company to manage the clearing of the land. As work on the plantation gets underway, blight attacks the rubber trees, workers revolt, and João's son, Flavio, begins a forbidden romance with Jim's daughter, Kerry. Meanwhile, in Michigan, a multiethnic group of workers struggles against the indignities of life in the Ford factories, culminating in an explosive wildcat strike at the Rouge, Ford's main production complex. The narrative contains a profusion of subplots, including Prohibition-era bootlegging and Diego Rivera's mural-making at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Despite some heavy-handed political messaging, Sayles offers a propulsive view into the era's rapacious capitalism and rapid social changes. This textured tale will resonate with readers concerned about workers' rights and corporate greed. Agent: Anthony Arnove, ROAM. (Jan.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Scene from the lives of those caught in the tentacles of the Depression-era Ford Motor Company. Filmmaker-novelist Sayles wrote and directedMatewan (1987), a classic film about a miners' strike, so this story, which largely turns on unionization efforts at the automaker, understandably appeals to him. Henry Ford himself is largely offscreen; instead, Sayles emphasizes the ground-level workers who find themselves under the corporate heel, until they find a path to resistance. Among the most engrossing are Rosa Schimmel, a daughter of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who becomes involved in the organizing efforts, and Zeke Crowder, a factory-floor worker, who like most Black Ford employees, was thrust into the most dangerous jobs. Side plots abound, most prominently involving Fordlandia, the company's ill-fated attempt to farm rubber trees in Brazil. But there are other scenes involving the mob's engagement with the company, Henry's enchantment with Nazism, Diego Rivera's arrival to paint murals on the company's behalf, Joe Louis' heavyweight title, journalists, radio pundits, Klansmen, race riots, romances, and more. Indeed, too much: Sayles' novels generally lean toward the epic, but in this case the book--which stretches from the start of the Depression to the end of World War II--feels at once overstuffed yet thin when it comes to each individual plotline. As Sayles notes in the acknowledgements, Detroit in this era was "more a high-pressure crucible than a genteel American melting pot," but a little less scene-cutting would deliver the message more clearly. Still, though the plot is busy, the message is simple and potent: Unchecked corporate power is a path to the mistreatment of humans, but people have the capacity, together, to win back their dignity. A well-researched if manic trek through the perils of industrialization. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
