Today in Wheeling History: April 12--"The Barefoot Man," Davis Grubb’s Wheeling‑centered labor novel, is published by Simon & Schuster (1971).
Set in 1930 in the fictional coal town of Glory and the nearby city of Wheeling, "The Barefoot Man" is Davis Grubb’s searing historical novel about class struggle, industrial violence, and the human cost of the Great Depression. The story opens amid a brutal mine strike in Glory, where Cal Dunne, his mother Roseanna, and his wife Jessie brace for a showdown with company gunmen and strikebreakers. A desperate farming couple, Jack and Jean Farjeon, arrive just as tensions explode; Jean is shot and dies in childbirth, and Cal is killed, while Mother Dunne is framed for murder. Grief‑stricken and half‑mad, Farjeon vows revenge on the five men he holds responsible, a quest that soon leads him downriver to Wheeling.
Grubb uses Wheeling—thinly veiled but vividly recognizable in its riverfront streets, soup kitchens, and working‑class neighborhoods—as the urban stage where Farjeon seeks a gun, encounters scabs and union men, and confronts the machinery of capital and law. The title’s “barefoot man” is a chilling metaphor: a mythical, ever‑waiting unemployed worker invoked by bosses to terrify laborers into accepting starvation wages. Written after "Fools’ Parade" and deeply informed by Grubb’s Moundsville and Upper Ohio Valley roots, the novel fuses social realism with moral fable, turning Wheeling’s industrial landscape into a parable about fear, solidarity, and the specter of unemployment that haunted the region.
To learn more: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV (https://tinyurl.com/43nz4vtc), Wikipedia (https://tinyurl.com/m9pv2dvy) (https://tinyurl.com/mus8xv6e), West Virginia Encyclopedia (https://tinyurl.com/5fpf47vr), Kirkus Reviews (https://tinyurl.com/2fexe4v3), Voices of West Virginia (https://tinyurl.com/y54btk86)
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; Wikimedia Commons, West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Set in 1930 in the fictional coal town of Glory and the nearby city of Wheeling, "The Barefoot Man" is Davis Grubb’s searing historical novel about class struggle, industrial violence, and the human cost of the Great Depression. The story opens amid a brutal mine strike in Glory, where Cal Dunne, his mother Roseanna, and his wife Jessie brace for a showdown with company gunmen and strikebreakers. A desperate farming couple, Jack and Jean Farjeon, arrive just as tensions explode; Jean is shot and dies in childbirth, and Cal is killed, while Mother Dunne is framed for murder. Grief‑stricken and half‑mad, Farjeon vows revenge on the five men he holds responsible, a quest that soon leads him downriver to Wheeling.
Grubb uses Wheeling—thinly veiled but vividly recognizable in its riverfront streets, soup kitchens, and working‑class neighborhoods—as the urban stage where Farjeon seeks a gun, encounters scabs and union men, and confronts the machinery of capital and law. The title’s “barefoot man” is a chilling metaphor: a mythical, ever‑waiting unemployed worker invoked by bosses to terrify laborers into accepting starvation wages. Written after "Fools’ Parade" and deeply informed by Grubb’s Moundsville and Upper Ohio Valley roots, the novel fuses social realism with moral fable, turning Wheeling’s industrial landscape into a parable about fear, solidarity, and the specter of unemployment that haunted the region.
To learn more: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV (https://tinyurl.com/43nz4vtc), Wikipedia (https://tinyurl.com/m9pv2dvy) (https://tinyurl.com/mus8xv6e), West Virginia Encyclopedia (https://tinyurl.com/5fpf47vr), Kirkus Reviews (https://tinyurl.com/2fexe4v3), Voices of West Virginia (https://tinyurl.com/y54btk86)
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; Wikimedia Commons, West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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