Akron Public Library

The true story of a South African hero's journey to freedom. In the country's turbulent and divided times in the 1980s, Patrick Chamusso is an oil refinery foreman and soccer coach who is apolitical. That is, until he and his wife Precious are jailed. Patrick is stunned into action against the country's oppressive reigning system, even as police Colonel Nic Vos further insinuates himself into the Chamussos' lives.

The booming North Dakota oil business is spawning "man camps," shantytowns full of men hired to work on the rigs, in towns without enough housing to accommodate them. In such twilight spaces, its easy for a person to vanish. And when two young men in their first year on the job disappear without a trace, only their mothers believe theres hope of finding them. Despite reassurances that the police are on the case, the two women think the oil company...

Oil workers battle company goons in a labor conflict in 1930s Pennsylvania. It happens after five workers die in an accident at the Thunder Oil refinery, where management is penny-pinching on safety measures to increase profits. Leading the strikers is union organizer Doris Golden and driller Bill Halvorsen, their joint struggle giving birth to love.