BIO:

Ray Welling is an Australian-based author who grew up in Toledo, Ohio, where Byline for the Dead is set. He earned a journalism degree from Northwestern University and worked in Chicago before meeting an Australian woman and following her to Sydney, where he's lived ever since. He has worked in publishing, digital content and academia, and along the way he earned a PhD in marketing and published an article in the Journal of Celebrity Studies that name-checks the Kardashians. Byline for the Dead is his first novel and he is currently seeking a publisher for the sequel.

SYNOPSIS:

Byline for the Dead interweaves stories from different eras as two journalists, five decades apart, work to unravel the truths about one of the most violent labor strikes in American history.

In 1984, Gray Wheeler is a disillusioned young reporter working for The Toledo Sword. Assigned to cover the 50th anniversary of the real-life Auto-Lite strike—known as the “Battle of Toledo,” a bloody, five-day labor uprising involving 10,000 union workers and 1,300 Ohio National Guard troops—Gray stumbles across a mystery left unpublished a half-century earlier by another young reporter that connects the 1934 massacre to present-day political machinations.

Putting together the pieces, past and present, the two reporters work in tandem across the decades, unravelling the corruption that led to the deadly strike. As the story proceeds, we learn of desperate workers, soulless political agitators, ruthless National Guard troops, suppressed government reports, buried testimonies, and suspicious deaths.

Byline for the Dead explores themes of journalistic integrity, institutional memory, and the power of the past to shape the present.

LINKS:

raywelling.com

https://thesagergroup.net/books/byline-for-the-dead