From the Civil War era until the Great Depression, Mary Harris "Mother" Jones was an in-your-face labor organizer who supported the mill workers, garment workers, and coal miners - men women and children - in their fight for fair pay and humane working conditions.

Locally, Mother Jones is best recognized by a Pennsylvania historical marker in Coaldale that reads, "Mary Harris 'Mother' Jones, Labor leader, and workers' advocate. Arrested and jailed in the Homestead was speaking to striking Steelworkers 1919. When the judge asked who gave her a permit to speak publicly, she replied, "Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams!'"During a trial during the Great Coal Strike of 1902, a West Virginia District Attorney called Jones, "The most dangerous woman in America."A coal miner's son, West Virginia author Jerry Ash grew up to be a writer and taught journalism at West Virginia University. While working on a book about West Virginia, he learned about "a tiny old Irish woman who was, in her day, alternately referred to with reverence or hate as Mother Jones.""There are dozens of historical books written about Mother Jones," said Ash, "but Hellraiser: Mother Jones - the Historical Novel is the first book that is written as a historical novel. It is written from the fictional viewpoint of Mother Jones herself."The core of the novel spans the period from when Jones married a union organizer in 1861 until her death in 1930 at the age of 93.She became active as a union organizer herself after her husband and four children there died during a yellow fever epidemic; and then four years later, losing her home and business in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Looking for direction in life, Jones was moved by the 1877 railroad strike, the Haymarket Riot, and depression of 1886.Universally unsupported by the right or the left, as she opposed abortion and women's suffrage, she was able to speak directly to the people, and was successful in organizing the wives and children of striking workers."We need another Mother Jones today," Ash declared. "The economic issues that people are facing today are very similar to the ones that she was very much involved with in her day.""We have a similar situation today, not in coal mines and mills, but in retail and fast food chains, and big-box retailers. These working poor are being exploited just as they were being exploited during the Industrial Revolution."An ironic viewpoint for Ash who served as an Independent in the West Virginia State Senate. "I refused to swear my allegiance to either labor or business, and that didn't set well with the United Mine Workers of America or the AFL-CIO. Since I wasn't 'for' them, they assumed I must be 'against' them. And so they put me in their bad guy column. Business didn't know what to think.""Until I started writing this book, I hadn't given a whole lot of thought to these issues," Ash said."As I got into the book, she began talking to me. I began to realize that capitalism is the great foe of democracy. Democracy has given us the expectation of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We have a Constitution and the Bill of Rights which will allow that.""She said that capitalism began to run the country - not democracy but capitalism. That was the issue then; that is still the issue today."For information and a download of the preface to Hellraiser: Mother Jones - the Historical Novel, seejerryash.com.