Landing on shelves September 9 is an unforgettable and gritty story for readers passionate about and supportive of women’s rights and labor movements, a timely read to inspire current-day activists. ‘Not Yet Lost‘ by Janis M. Falk brings to life the story of a Polish immigrant woman fighting against oppression in Depression-era Detroit. Kim Suhr, director of Red Oak Writing calls the book “a love letter to the working class.”
Reserved and compliant Florence and her best friend, the fiery and forthright Basia, work in a cigar factory where they receive low wages, poor treatment, and endure unsafe working conditions. Set in 1937 Detroit, readers are taken into the Eastern European immigrant struggle, as Florence risks everything, including her relationship with her husband, to fight for worker rights. Will Florence and her husband resolve their conflicts both inside and outside the home? At what cost?
Described as “a reminder of our past and a caution about the future” by author Ellen Barker, the book delves into themes of workers’ rights, gender roles, and the ever-present fight for equality, while also prompting necessary conversations about the significance of labor movements and the struggles of women in the workplace.
For the author, writing this dramatic and engaging book was a long time coming, as her career as an author is her “second act”. We had the opportunity to speak with Janis about transitioning from a business career to being a novelist, and what she hopes readers will be inspired by today from Basia’s fight for labor rights in the past, while also navigating her personal life. Read on below for the interview as well as an exclusive excerpt from ‘Not Lost Yet’!
Can you first tell us about your writing career origins and how it was part of your “second act” in your career journey?
Thanks to my mother, I was an avid reader growing up, and therefore quite an imaginative kid. In fourth grade I wrote a story about bear fighting in Elizabethan England – from the bear’s point of view. I was an early adopter of animal rights! The story was published in an international lit journal. Who doesn’t love positive reinforcement? All along I intended to be a writer, or a journalist, and I started college as an English major. I realized what really got me jazzed was discovery, learning outside of a somewhat sheltered childhood.
Also, I learned I needed to earn a living. Not being cut out for teaching, I pursued a path in business and continued writing as an avocation. My Detroit roots and fascination with all things technical and industrial led me to a career first in market research of industrial products, next to product management in an engineering firm, and then to commercial real estate management. All the exposure to a wide range of people informs my writing. I interfaced with several unions and many CEOs.
I was fortunate enough after my children were launched to exit the business world and refocus on my interests. I sought out classes and conferences and unearthed a whole new world of people. My natural curiosity led me to learn the publishing industry. Anticipating some people might wonder if I regret not pursuing writing as a primary career, and delaying for the benefit of my children, I say no. My adult children, daughter and son, have been superlatively supportive, as has my husband. I’m proud to be a role model demonstrating individuals can do many things, and be many people, in this one life we have to live.
What inspired the story behind ‘Not Yet Lost’, and how long did it take to write the book?
Many parts of the story had been simmering in my mind for years. For example, how Detroit had been the mechanical version of Silicon Valley in the early 20th Century. It was the center of innovation and culture and attracted immigrants from all over the world. When the Depression hit, the fall was much harder for Detroit.
Also, I wanted to showcase Eastern European immigrants. Poles and other Eastern European immigrants are not the ethnic groups most Americans are familiar with. Many people never paid attention to that part of the world until the recent war in Ukraine.
Then, when I was researching the Detroit neighborhood my dad grew up in, I read about the awful treatment of women who worked in the cigar factories. I discovered my husband’s grandmother worked in a cigar factory. The strikes ignited a wave of labor actions across the city among women workers in retail, shoes stores, drugstore lunch counters, etc. I found it interesting that women contributed so much to the Spirit of ’37 particularly in Detroit where the focus centers on the United Auto Workers and unions in heavy industry.
I spent two to three years writing the book. It was critiqued in real time by my writers’ group, which helped immensely. Then another two years to work through the publication process.
It is very common to learn that women’s contributions to important history have been erased or ignored. Why was it important for you to highlight a lesser known story or history in this book?
I don’t think the story was willfully erased as much as overshadowed by the colorful history of the UAW. The intrigue of Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance is hard to compete with. Also, there’s a matter of sheer numbers. Clearly, members of the UAW and the Teamsters far outnumbered cigar factory workers. Heavy industry drove the economy of Detroit and the nation.
Yet, I think the role these women played was important. They kept food on the table when the men were out of work. They reduced the number of people in soup lines and dying on the streets at a time when there were few social safety nets. The hand rolled cigar industry was already dying at the time but, as wretched as it was, it offered immigrants an opportunity to provide for themselves. Accordingly, they deserved respect.
Basia has to balance the dynamics in her own home, in her community, as well as her workplace. Something so many women even to this day have to navigate. What do you hope will inspire readers as they turn the pages of ‘Not Yet Lost’?
I loved writing about the days the women spent in the factory together once they took it over. The sharing with each other, supporting one another, caring for each other, telling stories, laughing together. The solidarity among the women was a true joy. I hope these scenes inspire people to seek that joy of solidarity in real life.
What was the most fascinating aspect of the history of Polish Immigrant women you learned while doing research for the book?
I was fascinated by the extent to which Polish immigrant women wielded their power when an issue was important to them. Mary Zuk led a strike against meat purveyors in 1935. Women generally managed the meager budgets of the time and were challenged to feed their families. Zuk initiated a boycott until the butchers capitulated and lowered prices. Also, women who worked chroming small parts such as door handles for cars engaged in work slowdowns until their demands were met. Polish immigrant women were as voracious as mother bears when it came to issues affecting their families and communities.
While your book details a historical fight, the current battle for gender rights, labor rights and equality are more present than ever in the United States under the current Trump administration. What kinds of connections do you hope readers will make with what is happening now?
You’re right. Today’s socioeconomic political environment closely mirrors that of the 1930s in many ways. Learning from history can help us all evaluate our current situation from a distance which removes the rancor. I wish we would learn from our mistakes. The situation in meat packing plants with underage immigrants working in dangerous conditions is a parallel.
American consumers demand low prices, and we expect to have everything available to us all the time. We aren’t willing to pay the true cost of what we consume. Would Americans pay a higher price and eat meat sparingly so as not to pressure companies into using cheap labor? Of course, I acknowledge the companies’ responsibility as well. There needs to be a market correction.
How do you hope your book will inspire readers to face the current battles and not give up hope when it feels like all is lost?
Women before us have lived through hardships much more severe than those we’re experiencing now, with fewer legal protections. What did they do? They acted. The best way to achieve wins is to act in a productive way which garners, and gives, respect. Let’s use our intelligence. We must speak the language of the people we’re trying to persuade.
Sometimes we all like to be self-indulgent and express our frustration and rage. It feels good to release anger. It’s not productive. Demeaning and accusing “old, white men” will get us nowhere. Ears close. Equality is not a zero-sum game. Let’s not fall into the easy trap of rancor and accusation. Let’s instead do the hard work of creating mutual understanding.
Not to get overly political, but we should ask ourselves, why did the right wing come into power and how can the issues of those constituents be addressed to prevent extremism? That may not be a popular answer, but groups of people bashing each other has never worked. Let’s lead instead.
And finally, what advice or encouragement would you share with other women who may be at a crossroads in their career or life, looking for what their “second act” might be, in a world that works hard to make women invisible after a certain age?
Make yourself visible! Evaluate what you always wanted to accomplish in your life, for yourself, then take the steps to do it. Avoid letting society, or fear of society’s acceptance, put on the brakes. Be excellent at whatever you endeavor, for yourself, and for the sake of being excellent, and the world will take notice. I have no patience for the attitude of “if someone would only give me a chance.” No one is going to, so you have to take your own chance, make your own luck.
Educate yourself, acquire skills, be someone to be respected. In 2021 I participated in the New York State Summers Writers Institute sponsored by Skidmore College. Only two of us were older than thirty. It was delightful! The young people, early to mid-twenties, were so engaging and talented. They treated me as a peer, offered thoughtful critique of my writing, and I learned so much from them. You may feel the odd one out, but you might be surprised by how accepting people can be.
Below is an excerpt from ‘Not Yet Lost’, published here with permission.
CHAPTER 10
Sunday morning,February 14, 1937
“I thought that homily would never end!” Basia said to Florence. They stood just inside the door of Dom Polski. So far about fifty women, and a few men, had gathered in the hall. Excitement mixed with anxiety permeated the air. Everyone wore overcoats and gloves. They wouldn’t be staying long, so no need to heat the building.
“Florence, we missed you last night. Where were you?” Mrs. Koseba asked.
Basia began to answer when Florence placed a hand on her arm, quieting her.
“Alex didn’t want me to come. He doesn’t want me to get involved.”
“Fine for him to say! Everyone knows he gets special treatment at the plant. He’s allowed time in the experiment room. He’s treated with respect. The men talk about it all the time,” another woman said.
“He doesn’t really.” Florence bowed her head, yet she knew he did.
“Well, whether he does or he doesn’t, we could’ve used you last night,” the woman said, doing nothing to hide her indignation. “It’s not like she let us down!” Basia defended her friend. “You should’ve seen her sneaking those paint cans out of the garage into alley. Then all I did was swoop them up.”
“Really? Won’t Alex mind?” queried Mrs. Koseba.
“Maybe . . . when he goes to paint the fence in the spring.” Florence grinned.
“Does he know you’re here now?” a woman asked.
“Not exactly. I told him I’d be home late from Mass. He didn’t ask.” Florence shrugged. When she left home she hadn’t been sure she would go to the hall. She left the option open. During Mass she’d thought about the Westside women from Ternstedt she and Basia visited. They were taking action, doing something to relieve people’s suffering. Remembering the poor souls on the streetcar, she thanked God for her good fortune and decided to put her toe in the water. Joining one cavalcade couldn’t be too harmful.
“Come look at these signs.” Helen, Wally’s wife, led her and Basia through the crowd to the back hallway. Leaning against the wall, myriad signs painted on flattened cardboard boxes and butcher paper attached to scraps of wood and lengths of metal poles awaited their debut. Florence scanned the ragtag bunch of them.
CLEAN BATHROOMS
BREAD, NOT CRUMBS
8 HOUR DAYS
WHEN DO WE WANT IT? NOW, NOW, NOW!
Colors bled into one another. Letters shrank in size toward the right edge of the paper. The signs, perhaps not eloquent in their deliv- ery, told no lies. The brushstrokes oozed the conviction and fervor of their makers—the colors, mostly red and white, the colors of Poland. “Flo, your painting skills from your convent days would’ve helped,” Helen said, offering a wry smile.
“I won’t deny the signs wouldn’t pass muster in art school, but I think they’re beautiful. Every one of them.” Pride surged through her very being. “Is it time?”
The women engaged a few others and passed the signs down the line toward the front door. The group, now too large for Dom Polski, gathered in the street.
The women organized themselves into rows, eight to ten abreast. Basia and Romek were in front, facing the crowd, along with Father Maletski and another priest from a parish on the other side of the neighborhood. An experienced union organizer agreed to help and occupied a position in front. Joan walked up and down the sidelines of the formation handing out song sheets. Women who previously snubbed each other or had a petty quarrel exchanged smiles as they jabbed their makeshift signs high into the air, making them dance. Someone blew a whistle, and they advanced.
The planned route departed Dom Polski on East Forest Avenue, proceeded up Chene past East Grand Boulevard to Joseph Cam- pau, right to Mt. Elliott, and right again down to Warren Avenue, which would land them at Perrien Park. In the heart of Poletown, the park had served the community as a place of protest during the meat strike a few years prior.
The park was also near the White Eagle factory. The press descended before they reached East Grand Boulevard. Joan from Głos Ludowy provided the tipoff. Today Joan participated rather than chronicled. Reporters shot questions at the women on the ends of the rows, cameras shooting off every few steps. All the while the women chanted, repeating their demands. Now and again Joan led them in song. The women belted out verse after verse of “Internationale,” then other songs.
The union organizer led the group across the trolley tracks. Trolley riders hung out the open double-hung windows, and the women played to the captive audience. Chants grew louder, signs flew higher. For just a moment time stood still for Florence. Her friends, neighbors, the priest, all together, silent no more. She started to cry.
Anushka, her goddaughter, looped her hand through her arm and smiled. Florence laughed, cried, and sang, all at the same time. Uncurling her shoulders, lifting her feet higher, arm in arm, she and Anushka proceeded over the tracks. Fear of reprisal slid down her straightened back, cast astern.
They paraded past most of the cigar factories. They cut through the neighborhood to include White Eagle and Mazur Cressman.
Men, women, and children came out of their houses to watch. Many fell in step. Marching women beckoned them to join. Crowds grew deeper. Word spread like wildfire. Women took turns carrying the heavy wooden signs, giving their arms a rest. Sometimes a pair of women would carry a sign to share the load.
As they marched past her house, Florence waved to her sons, Lucien and Frank, who’d climbed out their bedroom window onto the top of the porch overhang to watch. “You be careful up there!” Florence shouted. Distracted, she tripped on a rogue wooden block. The uneven street was paved with creosote-soaked white pine.
Another verse had been sung when Florence felt warm, heavy breath at her shoulder. Singing drowned out the clip-clops of the police horse approaching from behind. The uniformed officer, with practiced skill, directed his mount up the middle of the marchers. Chestnut brown withers looming at head height cleaved the crowd. She pushed into the others to avoid the boot nested in the metal stirrup. Looking behind her, she observed about a dozen horses wending their way through the people, along with a lineup of police cars at the cross streets. In front, the leaders raised their knees higher and their voices louder.
Alex allowed the living room drapery to slip back into place. Police horses had arrived. The scene looked too familiar. He donned his fedora and long navy blue coat and descended the front porch steps. With his long strides, he overtook the marchers, soon arriving at the forefront. Alex turned to face the approaching throngs.
Humbled for a moment by their sincerity, their fervor, and their devotion, he needed to protect them from their innocence. He saw Police Chief Packett. Sirens and the arrival of fire trucks and paddy wagons drew residents out of their homes. Now police hovered around the journalists taking notes. The scene did not bode well. Alex backed away from the marchers, receding into the crowd, not wanting to be noticed. He backed right into someone.
“Oh, pardon me!” He came face-to-face with Diego Rivera. The artist hugged a sketchpad with his left arm and waved a charcoal pencil with his right.
“Mr. Falkowski, I see. We meet again.” A glint of amusement danced in his dark brown eyes.
“Yes. I hope I didn’t cause you to mar your drawing.” “No matter. It’s just a sketch.”
“Ah. You must specialize in marches. You sketched the march on the Rouge plant, didn’t you say?”
“I like to capture faces expressing raw emotion. Full of life. Big- ger than life, eh?”
Alex followed the artist’s gaze, trying to see what he saw. Rows upon rows of women, all ages and sizes, presented a collage of fury and hope. Jutting chins, round open mouths, straight downstrokes of spines.
“What brings you to this event, Mr. Falkowski? As I recall, you don’t see value in such demonstrations.”
“My wife. She was coerced into being part of this mess.” Alex searched the rows for Florence.
“Was she now? She didn’t choose?”
“No!” Alex yelled to be heard over the singing. “Then I hope you find her soon.”
Standing next to Rivera now, Alex gazed at the artist’s pad. He’d captured the vanguard. Father Maletski, arms out to the side, shoul- der height, sleeves of his vestments billowing, a protective shroud for his flock. Alex could see the motion in the draping of the garment. Romek, his brawny bulk dominating the front line, oversized.
Basia, fierce with fury and fervor, stood tall and strident. He could almost hear her voice emanating from the page, even in the surrounding din, so real had Rivera replicated her image. Police horses’ flanks appeared to breathe. Lyrics to “Internationale” twisted with torque in his head. He froze. The coda. He knew the coda and how this would end. He snapped to.
“I have to go.” He walked away.
“I hope you find her soon,” Rivera said. “Before it gets ugly,” he added, only for himself to hear.
Alex headed back along the march route and found himself face-to-face with Chief Packett. He’d never met the man in per- son, but he knew the face from the newspaper. Was the whole world at this march? Alex looked quizzically at the chief who, with three small gestures, tipped his cap three times, almost like he had a tic.
“Well?” Packett drew the word into multiple syllables.
“Good morning,” Alex replied. He needed to distance himself from the chaos in the street and save Florence. He started to sidestep the policeman. Packett grabbed his upper arm and escorted him a short way down an alley.
“Let’s try this again. Look at me.” Packett repeated the troika with his hat, then looked down at his extended hand in which a bullet lay. “Until death.”
Alex sighed. The secret greeting of the Black Legion. Visions of the night of his coerced initiation hurtled through his mind. Three tips of the hat initiated a call and response. Should he say it? Maybe he’d be arrested if he knew the response and the police thought he was a willing member.
“One last time, Falkowski. I say, ‘until death.’”
Alex’s head snapped up at the use of his name, then he low- ered his eyes in silence. The glossy shine of Packett’s rounded police boots reflected the rays of the sun tunneling through the alley. In his mind Alex saw those boots poking out from a long black robe, reflecting lumens of a flashlight. Then he knew.
“Under the star of the Guard,” Alex stuttered. He remembered the response. He just didn’t expect the chief of police to be one to ask for it.
“I knew you’d remember. Now I’m assigning you the task of dis- rupting this brazen display.” Packett gestured expansively toward the rows of women marching.
“And if I don’t care to?”
“You got a wife out there, ain’t you? You wouldn’t want those youngsters of yours on your porch roof to see something happen to their mama now, would you?”
“What do you want me to do?” He never expected he would actually be given orders by the Black Legion.
“Figure it out! I’m busy. But it better be quick. And don’t let me down.” Packett pumped his open palm up and down as if assessing the weight of the bullet.
Packett walked away, leaving Alex resigned to devise a plan. After a moment of hawing, he bounded down the alley to the back door of Wally’s Bar. He pounded loudly. He knew the bar was closed; it was Sunday. Wally lived in the second-floor flat. Soon Wally leaned out of the window above.
“Alex, how ya doin’? I’m watching the parade from here. Care to join me? Somethin’, ain’t it?”
“It’s something all right. Can you come down for a minute?” Waiting for Wally, Alex paced across the alley and back multiple times. He raised his coat collar and tugged on the end of his sleeves. He laced and unlaced his fingers and punched one fist into the palm of the other hand. Unnerved. Packett had unnerved him by men- tioning Florence and the boys. Damn Nick! How could he have roped him into this predicament?
“Alex, you all right? Your face is red. Are you sick? Here, c’mon in.” Wally backed away from the doorway so Alex could walk past.
“I need a favor.”
The men whispered in the dark hallway.
“I forgot my wallet. I’ll pay you at the bar tomorrow,” Alex promised.
“I know you’re good for it,” Wally said.
Minutes later Alex slipped out the alley door, his arms crossed with his long blue coat folded over them. He considered his options. A block away, the old stables occupied the corner. When Germans occupied the neighborhood, horses were kept to draw beer wagons. Now Poles employed horses for milk wagons and fruit and vegetable carts.
Alex walked along the side of the street against the flow of the protesters. Close to the stables a delivery wagon full of dried hay was perched where the driveway met the street. He knocked a bundle of hay onto the street, then drizzled Spirytus, 95 percent alcohol, from the bottle concealed under his coat onto the pile. He doused the street with a generous amount, then dropped the bottle under the hay wagon. He paused, tucked his coat up under his arm, retrieved a cigarette from his shirt pocket, and pretended to light it, dropping one hot match onto the wagon and a second into the puddle of alcohol on the street.
Whoosh! The street was on fire. Flames, burning hot in the high- proof alcohol, ignited both the hay and the creosote in the wooden blocks paving the street. Immediately, yells of “fire” permeated the crowd. Alex hoped the trifling fire and subsequent cries would incite enough of a disturbance to fulfill his forced commission without anyone getting hurt.
At this bit of provocation, the fire truck and police cars rolled into the streets and faced the crowd head-on. The police Packards and fire trucks advanced tentatively at first, then moved without regard to people in their path. Discordant shouts, screams, honking horns, and sirens usurped harmonious singing and chanting. Now turned about, Alex hastened through the melee of people. He found Florence toward the front of the group. He grabbed her by the arm.
“Chodźtu!” Come here, Alex commanded Florence.
He yanked her through the crowd. In the slipstream of the public safety entourage he pulled her through the detritus from the march. Signs dropped in the street and run over by the trucks lay mangled and broken. Song sheets matted with dirty footprints lay forgotten, no more enthusiastic voices to bring the words to life. The boys climbed back through their bedroom window as their parents approached their house.
Once inside Alex lambasted her, berating her for her naïveté. “Do you want to lose your job like Joe? Then I’d have two millstones around my neck? Parading around out there with communists!
What were you thinking? Nobody cares about your damn march! You could walk from here to the ends of the earth and no one would care. You work in a lousy, cheap, dying company. They’re not going to pay you more.”
“You don’t know that!” Florence dropped onto the upholstered sofa and lifted her feet onto the coffee table. “Besides, it’s not all about the money!”
“What is it then? That loony friend of yours? Did she talk you into it? Thinks she’s smart, eh? She’s trouble! That’s what she is.”Then he left. The slam of the front door reverberated through the house.
Before long, Florence sensed movement at the bottom of the stair- case. She looked up to see her older son, Lucien, watching her as she wiped tears and her nose in her ever-present handkerchief. She patted the sofa seat next to her.
“I’m sorry, Mama.” Lucien hugged his mother from the side from his place adjacent on the couch. “I know you wanted the march to go well.”
“Get your brother. You boys must be hungry.” When Florence tried to stand, her son pulled her back to a seat.
“I’m sorry about Papa. He’s so mean. He shouldn’t say those things to you and call you those names.”
“I know,” Florence whispered. “You have to understand him. He doesn’t know any different. He tries to protect us in this mixed-up world. He loves us in his own way. Let’s get something to eat.” Florence rose and Lucien ran toward the stairs to summon Frank. Florence stopped in the hallway to straighten the painting of the Black Madonna. She made the sign of the cross.
“Proszę, szczesc Boże!” Please, sweet Jesus.
