A Brief History of Being Here
In 1936 Pittsburgh, seventeen-year-old Ruth O'Hara sees a mill supervisor tear down a safety placard momen
In 1936 Pittsburgh, seventeen-year-old Ruth O'Hara sees a mill supervisor tear down a safety placard moments after a worker is hurt. The photograph could expose a lie, but Ruth's new apprenticeship at the local newspaper depends on telling a clean story about industrial progress.
As eviction notices reach the families around her, Ruth discovers that a picture can protect the powerful as easily as it can reveal harm. Her father has his own history with the mill, and Eddie, the union courier she cannot quite forgive for being right, insists that proof is not the same as permission.
With the newspaper deadline closing in, Ruth must choose between the future she can afford and a record her neighbors can shape in their own words. A vivid historical YA novel about art, loyalty, and the cost of being seen under a hard deadline.
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The mill gate opened before daylight had finished deciding what color the river ought to be. Men came through it in knots, shoulders hunched inside wet coats, lunch pails tapping their knees. I stood by the brick wall with my folding camera under my skirt hem, pretending I was waiting for the streetcar.
The assignment was ordinary enough. Mr. Bellamy wanted a few pictures of the morning shift for a Sunday piece about steady employment. He had said steady with the careful, clean voice he used for things that depended on someone else being tired.
I had two loaded sheet-film holders left: one already in the camera, one tucked in my case, when the cart wheel caught.
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