River Rising
by T.P. Jones (Author)



The Gamble
by T.P. Jones (Author)



Jackson
by T.P. Jones (Author)
 About the Books

Jackson
The Jackson Packing Company is in trouble. The old-line family-owned firm, once one of the largest in the country, now struggles merely to survive in the fiercely competitive meatpacking industry. When a major marketing agreement is cancelled, bankruptcy is imminent. More than two thousand people will lose their jobs, but the secretive company continues to avoid public scrutiny, the coming calamity known by only a few.

Assigned the job of unmasking the firm, Rachel Brandeis, an ambitious young reporter from the East Coast, spends weeks exhausting every possible resource. When at last she succeeds, however, that only signals the beginning of an attempt to save the company by selling it to its employees. To succeed, decades of animosity between company officials and the union representing most of the workers must be wiped away. At the center of the turmoil stand CEO Skip Peterson, obsessed with saving his family’s firm, and skeptical Union President Homer Budge, reluctant allies deserted by many of their former colleagues as they attempt the near impossible. Read more...



The Gamble
A hate crime story hits the local headlines, and then is picked up by The New York Times, when a museum exhibit honoring the oldest African-American citizen of Jackson is vandalized. Reiny Kopp -- the museum director now but an activist and trickster in the 1960s -- wants to respond by creating a new exhibit, the history of racism in the city, but the museum board orders him to remount the one that was vandalized. Looking for a third way, Mayor Eleanor “El” Plowman proposes that the city, which has very few black citizens, develop a program to encourage more blacks to move to Jackson. The reaction in the community is powerful and immediate.

Troubles accumulate. With the rising unemployment and stress on the budget, the city asks the public unions to take a 10 percent pay cut, an unprecedented proposal. The largest of the city unions responds by recruiting a new negotiator, Deuce Goetzinger, a man without negotiating experience but smart and tough, and Goetzinger counters the city proposal with one of his own, one so radical that it would change the power relationships in the management of the city should it ever be instituted. Thus begins a cat-and-mouse game between Goetzinger and Aggie Klauer, the city’s negotiator. The dead of winter now, snow storms descend upon the city in rapid succession as the conditions leading to a massive spring flood mount up one after another.



River Rising

Spring arrives not gradually but in an instant, snowmelt pouring into the tributaries and main stem of the Mississippi. As cities along the river prepare desperately for the onslaught, Jackson, with its floodwalls and levees, seems safe. Storms in the Upper Midwest dump torrents of rainwater on top of the raging snowmelt. Predictions for the crest of the flood rise, and a former city mayor Fritz Goetzinger demands that the flood protection be reinforced although the city can ill afford the money and the crest is still predicted to be below the top of the protection system. Finally, the politics of the situation trump expert opinion and the system is raised. Rain continues to pour down, and as the crest of the flood approaches, with it comes the climax of the worst year in the history of Jackson, Iowa.