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Rust

One woman's story of finding hope across the divide

Eliese Colette Goldbach

$26.99

Paperback

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English
Quercus Publishing
12 January 2021
When Eliese Goldbach was nine years old, she decided to become a Catholic nun. Twenty years later, with a Master's degree, she found herself making steel in the Rust Belt during the 2016 US election season. A small part of her wondered if she'd got stuck inside a dream that had gone horribly wrong. Trump was supposed to be golfing in Florida, not vying for the presidency. She was supposed to be saving souls, not stirring a vat of molten metal. The trajectory of her life had fallen short of expectations. The trajectory of the USA was going haywire.

Part memoir, part social commentary, framed by Eliese's experiences as a steelworker, RUST is about perspective, and shifting perspective: it's about change. Much of Eliese's life connects the identities that seem to be driving the USA apart, and the parallels with a post-Brexit UK are uncanny. She's a former Republican turned Democrat; a feminist with Christian roots. Anti-abortion - until she herself was subjected to sexual violence - a supporter of the right to choose. She doesn't fit neatly into any one box.

Appealing to readers of HILLBILLY ELEGY and EDUCATED, RUST explores Eliese's transformation from far-right to left-of-centre, detailing her first year as a steelworker, and the path that brought her to the mill in the first place. It is an American tale, but could just as easily be Sunderland, UK, as Cleveland, USA.

Raw and luminous, RUST explores the USA's, and the world's, most pressing issues in an attempt to amplify our understanding of one another across the divide. It's a rally cry to a nation at a crossroads.
By:  
Imprint:   Quercus Publishing
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 196mm,  Width: 130mm,  Spine: 24mm
Weight:   229g
ISBN:   9781529402810
ISBN 10:   1529402816
Pages:   320
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General/trade ,  ELT Advanced ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Eliese Colette Goldbach was a steelworker at ArcelorMittal Cleveland. She received an M.F.A. 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 The 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. She now works at John Carroll University and lives in Cleveland with her husband.

Reviews for Rust: One woman's story of finding hope across the divide

Eliese Colette Goldbach uses formal experiment, broken narrative, and a voice that admits doubt and questions the terms of its telling to fight silencing. Masterful form is often a question of well-managed ruptur * Leslie Jamison * There have been a lot of books written about life in industrial cities in the Midwest, but relatively few written by people who actually live in them, and few so heartfelt and unsparing. Rust is at once a unique memoir and a broad indictment of America's broken promise that anyone who came of age in the 21st century will find painfully familiar * Sarah Kendzior * Beautiful * Charlie LeDuff * Rust is a soulful telling of America's stubborn and forgotten core. Deeply honest and defying easy sentimentality, this book heralds the arrival of a true talent * Adam Chandler * In our whacked-out national moment, Eliese Colette Goldbach arrives in the nick of time, a fresh voice to revive an old, substantial truth: that one person's hard work, achieved despite troubles of heart and finance, of faith and family, is the most enduring American value of all. Rust is a memoir of steel and grit, yes, but soul above all, a young Cleveland millworker's eloquent tale of hard times that plants its boots squarely on the bookshelf of American working-class literature * David Giffels * A haunting meditation from the far shores of addiction, mental illness, and obsession * Ladette Randolph * Rust is a brave, heartfelt memoir whose pages overflow with hard-earned wisdom. Goldbach's story of embodying our national extremes--conservative vs progressive, religious vs secular, white collar vs blue--has endowed her with a singular ability to see through our partisan delusions and identify what, truly, unites us still as Americans. If your heart, like mine, feels poisoned by this era of political division, Rust may just be the antidote for which you've been searching * John Larison * The steel mill burns on in the heart of Cleveland, and in the pages of Eliese Collette Goldbach's transformative debut. This is indeed a memoir of steel and grit, the extraordinary work of every ordinary day. But like all great stories, Rust is also a love story?about a craft, a city, and the communities we forge there. Goldbach reminds us that what we make in turn makes us who and what we are * Dave Lucas * 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 * A female steelworker's soulful portrait of industrial life. Goldbach's evocative prose paints a Dantean vision of the mill...but she discovers in the plant's quirky, querulous employees an ethic of empathy and solidarity that bridges ideological divides. The result is an insightful and ultimately reassuring take on America's working class * Publisher's Weekly * Eliese Colette Goldbach uses formal experiment, broken narrative, and a voice that admits doubt and questions the terms of its telling to fight silencing. Masterful form is often a question of well-managed ruptur * Leslie Jamison * There have been a lot of books written about life in industrial cities in the Midwest, but relatively few written by people who actually live in them, and few so heartfelt and unsparing. Rust is at once a unique memoir and a broad indictment of America's broken promise that anyone who came of age in the 21st century will find painfully familiar * Sarah Kendzior * Beautiful * Charlie LeDuff * Rust is a soulful telling of America's stubborn and forgotten core. Deeply honest and defying easy sentimentality, this book heralds the arrival of a true talent * Adam Chandler * Goldbach turns in a gritty memoir of working in a steel mill while wrestling with the world beyond.... An affecting, unblinking portrait of working-class life * Kirkus Reviews * In our whacked-out national moment, Eliese Colette Goldbach arrives in the nick of time, a fresh voice to revive an old, substantial truth: that one person's hard work, achieved despite troubles of heart and finance, of faith and family, is the most enduring American value of all. Rust is a memoir of steel and grit, yes, but soul above all, a young Cleveland millworker's eloquent tale of hard times that plants its boots squarely on the bookshelf of American working-class literature * David Giffels * A haunting meditation from the far shores of addiction, mental illness, and obsession * Ladette Randolph * Rust is a brave, heartfelt memoir whose pages overflow with hard-earned wisdom. Goldbach's story of embodying our national extremes--conservative vs progressive, religious vs secular, white collar vs blue--has endowed her with a singular ability to see through our partisan delusions and identify what, truly, unites us still as Americans. If your heart, like mine, feels poisoned by this era of political division, Rust may just be the antidote for which you've been searching * John Larison * The steel mill burns on in the heart of Cleveland, and in the pages of Eliese Collette Goldbach's transformative debut. This is indeed a memoir of steel and grit, the extraordinary work of every ordinary day. But like all great stories, Rust is also a love story?about a craft, a city, and the communities we forge there. Goldbach reminds us that what we make in turn makes us who and what we are * Dave Lucas * Eliese Collete Goldbach might be the only essayist who does footnotes better than David Foster Wallace * The Pitt News * At times, Rust reads more like a great novel than an autobiography. Iit's full of evocative descriptions of a hot, deafening workplace where the risk of deadly injury is constant and sexist put-downs are a daily, if not hourly, occurrence. Initially drawn to the blue-collar life for its promise of the financial stability she so desperately needs, Goldbach comes to realize that her job at the mill could just as easily lead to a complete emotional breakdown. Ultimately, Goldbach's fearless, eye-opening book reminds us that the bonds between people can transcend their ideological differences, creating hope even in the darkest times and the most unexpected places. * Apple Books Review * 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 * Movingly and candidly told . . . At this most divisive moment in American politics, we could all learn from her example * Financial Times Weekend *


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