Blood Red Tomatoes — Chuck Barrett

Times are tough in the late 60s and farms are failing in the tomato fields of NW Ohio. There's a strike by farm workers and a farmer turns up with a hole in his head with a union organizer is in the frame. The evidence? An unfortunate threat and breathing while Brown.Ray and Margaret Odle, veterans of the Kentucky coal wars, now middle aged private labor detectives, get the call to investigate and nail the true perp. While the union moves to bring all the parties to the negotiating table, Ray and Margaret turn up a crop of rivals gone rogue, extortion run riot, back channel buyouts and threats beyond borders.Not to mention a killer with no compunction about crushing them like a blood red tomato.Blood Red Tomatoes is book of mystery fiction, but it gets the issues right-especially the fight to win collective bargaining agreements that protect farm workers and small family farmers caught up in ungovernable multinational supply chains. This is lost to many farm worker advocates who put all farmers in one category.--Baldemar Velasquez, founder and President, Farm Labor Organizing Committee, FLOC, AFL-CIO