Maker, A Novel

Nicole Fortin is on the cusp of realizing a long-held dream when her life takes a sudden turn. Instead of participating in the Olympic Games, she finds herself struggling to master the challenging physical demands of her job in an aerospace plant and win the confidence of her male colleagues. As her involvement in union activity deepens, she is drawn into the centre of a bitter labour battle that pits her workmates against their employer. In the midst of this escalating confrontation, incidents from Nicole's past threaten to destroy her credibility with her coworkers and her relationship with her daughter.
Workplace and family ties become tangled and stretched to the breaking point. Maker is working-class literature in the tradition of Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos and from Baraka Books Mick Lowe and The Nickel Range Trilogy. Jim Upton worked for twenty-five years in unionized jobs at an aerospace plant. During this time, he participated in several sets of contract negotiations as a union activist, including one as a member of the union negotiating committee.
He lives in Montreal. Maker is his first novel. In the media "There's a lot of trailblazing happening here, and a keen labour story told.