It’s Pittsburgh, 1910—the golden age of steel in the land of opportunity. Eastern European im-migrants Janos and Karina Kovac should be prospering, but their American dream is fading faster than the colors on the sun-drenched flag of their adopted country. Janos is exhausted from a decade of twelve-hour shifts, seven days per week, at the local mill. Karina, meanwhile, thinks she has found an escape from their run-down ethnic neighborhood in the modern home of a mill manager—until she discovers she is expected to perform the duties of both house-keeper and mistress. Though she resents her employer’s advances, they are more tolerable than being groped by drunks at the town’s boarding house.
When Janos witnesses a gruesome accident at his furnace on the same day Karina learns she will lose her job, the Kovac family begins to unravel. Janos learns there are people at the mill who pose a greater risk to his life than the work itself, while Karina—panicked by the thought of returning to work at the boarding house—becomes unhinged and wreaks a path of destruc-tion so wide that her children are swept up in the storm. In the aftermath, Janos must rebuild his shattered family—with the help of an unlikely ally.
Impeccably researched and deeply human, Beneath the Veil of Smoke and Ash delivers a time-less message about mental illness while paying tribute to the sacrifices America's immigrant ancestors made.
What inspired you to start writing?
I wrote constantly when I was the co-editor of my high school’s yearbook and even experimented with short stories in college. I didn’t give much thought to writing a novel until a genealogy project that I began in 2012 took on a life of its own. A months-long binge on Ancestry.com led to a fascinating conversation with my grandmother about her Lithuanian parents and her Slovak in-laws who arrived in America at the turn of the 20th century to work in the steel mills of Pittsburgh. Grandma Pearl shared many wonderful stories from her childhood with me and even presented me with a shoebox of old photos of my great-grandparents that I had never seen before. I was so in awe of my family’s hidden history that my genealogy project quickly evolved into a novel.
What was the hardest part about writing this book?
The historical details were the most challenging part of writing this novel. I wanted the conditions in the steel mill and coal mine to be accurate, and I wanted my characters to sound like they were from the 1910s. I relied on several books about the steel and coal mining industries written during the early twentieth century, and I constantly plugged words like “looker” and “pocketbook” into Google’s dictionary to check their usage over time.
Does one of the main characters hold a special place in your heart? If so, why?
There’s no question that Pole is the most special to me. He’s so genuine and has such an enormous heart. I also admire his resilience. No matter what obstacles are thrown his way, he finds a way to roll with the punches and maintain his sense of humor. He’s a lot like the boys I grew up with in Apollo, Pennsylvania. Many of them were rough around the edges, but had hearts of gold.
If your book was to be made into a movie, who are the celebrities that would star in it?
I’d definitely like Elizabeth Banks to play Karina. I love her quirkiness, and she looks exactly how I imagined Karina. As for Janos, I think a young Christopher Plummer would have been perfect for the role, but sadly, he is no longer with us. Since Michael Fassbender looks a lot like him, he would be a great choice. I loved him in all the X-Men movies.
What do you hope your readers take away from this book?
I want my readers to have empathy for the Kovac family and for Karina, especially. I hope my book sheds light on the struggles immigrants once faced and that readers will see the parallels with today’s immigration issues, particularly as they relate to anti-immigration sentiment. It is also my hope that this novel will give people a better understanding of mental illness and the many ways it can destroy a family.
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Tammy Pasterick
A native of Western Pennsylvania, Tammy Pasterick grew up in a family of steelworkers, coal miners, and Eastern European immigrants. She began her career as an investigator with the Na-tional Labor Relations Board and later worked as a paralegal and German teacher. She holds degrees in labor and industrial relations from Penn State University and German language and literature from the University of Delaware. She currently lives on Maryland's Eastern Shore with her husband, two children, and chocolate Labrador retriever.
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