After diving into quite a few Ann McMan books this year (Galileo, Jericho, Aftermath, Backcast), I was curious about the novel she penned with her wife, fellow author, and publisher, Salem West. Creating a literary love child with a person close to you sounds like a dream come true. The result here is nine and a half hours of humor, romance, and a deep dive into small town economics.
Here’s the premise-
Jill (Friday) Fryman is a line supervisor at a truck manufacturing plant which has recently been bought by a Japanese company. This is big news, but then mostly everything is big news in a small Indiana town where the most exciting event is “Pork Day” (think redneck beauty pageant). Jill’s work life and personal life are shaken up when El, a union representative and “agitator,” shows up with intentions to help the plant unionize. Although many workers could benefit from a labor union, El doesn’t push Jill (or her friends) into joining, and instead builds a relationship consisting of beer, laughs, companionship, and, in Jill’s case, love. When Jill’s personal life starts getting attacked by upper management for her affiliation with El, Jill has to make some choices. Those choices become even more prevalent when poor safety measures at the plant lead to serious consequences. Jill has to decide who she wants to be in the face of capitalistic controversy and love.
Hoosier Daddy is full of character, depth, and heart. McMan and West have created a town with so much life and personality. I wanted to meet the gang at Hoosier Daddy, the local bar, after my own shift and pound a couple of $5 beer pitchers, maybe even smoke a few cigarettes, though then I’d be constantly out of breath like the rest of the plant workers. The details, dialogue, and descriptions in the novel left me with a clean (or sometimes dirty) image at all times of who these people are and what this setting is like. One of my favorite lines this year is, “Are you fighting in the scarlet crusade?” “No, I do not have my period.” I had to hold back bursting out in laughter at my work desk when I heard that.
I love any story where I can do a capitalistic analysis using the communist manifesto. For the sake of avoiding too much boredom, I won’t go fully into that here. However, I’d like to express how much I enjoyed this overarching theme and how it influenced Jill’s character growth. Carl Marx suspected that oppression on the lower class (the proletariat) would eventually cause them to rise against the higher class (bourgeois) since, if the proletariat joined together, they would have the power needed to take control of their rights. After all, labor is a much needed demand. Unfortunately, the risk of losing employment and, therefore, livelihood, keeps the proletariat in fear and submission to the ruling class. We see this play out in Hoosier Daddy as T-bomb, Luanne, the rest of the workers, and even Jill are forced to fold to upper management despite working in poor, dangerous conditions with little breaks. What a labor union sometimes promises is the organization necessary to ban workers together in order to collectively demand better protection and rights. How this was all portrayed in Hoosier Daddy was fascinating and done with skill and understanding. I especially enjoyed how Jill struggled with her own role and the outcome of her decisions.
There’s only one thing I couldn’t get with in this book- so many of the intimate scenes take place in bathrooms and as an offbeat germophobe it is impossible for me to enjoy any semblance of romance when a toilet is in near proximity. However, this is the closest I have ever gotten to feeling such. I did like how bathrooms were their constant. The relationship between Jill and El was nicely done. The chemistry, tension, and desire was all there, but the authors let the romance breathe as the side plot developed.
Hoosier Daddy is perfect for anyone who likes their novels with humor, wit, and romance with a little extra substance. www.amazon.com/Hoosier-Daddy