Book Description:
Murder and suicide is only a part of what Doug Blackwelder runs up against when he is pulled into his community's struggle against an immoral and fiendish poultry company. Doug struggles to find a way to keep his farm and protect his loved ones as intrigue unfolds around him. The triumph of the human spirit over enormous personal tragedy and travail is revealed in the everyday lives of contract growers and processing plant workers in this daring murder mystery based on true stories.
About the Author:
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After witnessing first-hand the mistreatment of her friends and neighbors and after hearing numerous stories of terminations, intimidation and death within the poultry industry, Sylvia Tomlinson decided enough was enough. Tomlinson has devoted herself to revealing the injustices caused by the poultry industry. Having met many people who have been “plucked and burned”, she hopes this book will bring about change stating that she would like this book to spur legislative reform and awareness among the American public of how their food is produced.
Tomlinson received a bachelor of science from Michigan State University and has worked in the oil patch performing petroleum land work to help finance her agrarian dreams. Along with a ranching career, she and her husband raised a family on a typical small farm. She says, “Over the course of a decade, we raised my four children on the farm and sometimes with only farm income. It was tough.” This experience has left her with great compassion for the family farmer and a unique understanding of the challenges these farmers face. Later Sylvia and her husband began a small press called Redbud Publishing.
She has two previous works including The Meat Goats of Caston Creek , which provides advice about raising meat goats and is due to be released again later this year, and Maddie , first of a series in juvenile fiction.
Tomlinson was born in Detroit, Michigan where she lived for over 20 years. Having moved all over the South, she and her husband travel between their home in Victoria, Texas, and the Montana High Plains. |
Reviews:
Superbly written and very highly recommended reading ~ powerful, dramatic, and gripping to the last page.
- Midwest Book Review
This is an important book ~ this is about corporate greed, and how close it comes to all of us. Even as close as our own kitchen table.
- Marie Jones, Reviewer Bookideas.com
"This skillfully crafted novel explores the world of chicken growers (and to a lesser extent slaughterhouse workers) who are exploited by the powerful American poultry industry.
The plot, set in rural Oklahoma, centers on a married couple who decide to raise chickens to earn extra income. Doug Blackwelder, who narrates the story, his brother, and their best friend sign up to become chicken growers for a large corporation called Poultry Unlimited. However, their dream of easy money and comfortable living soon turns into a nightmare of exploitation, debt, fear, and murder.
In the very first chapter the body of the brothers' best friend is found hanging from a rope in his chicken house. The mystery of his death is not solved until the very end of the novel, and along the way there are plenty of surprises to keep the reader turning pages to find out what's going to happen next.
The book shows the growers to be no more than indentured servants, kept in line by the poultry company that arbitrarily cuts off shipments of chickens to anybody who complains or causes trouble. When the growers under Doug's leadership finally begin to meet and discuss their grievances, the tension increases and the reader is left to wonder what dirty trick Poultry Unlimited will come up with next to intimidate and control the growers.
Although the story is fictional, its author Sylvia Tomlinson has obviously done extensive research into the plight of poultry growers and the system under which they operate. The poultry company supplies the growers with periodic shipments of thousands of baby broiler chicks from the company's hatchery, as well as feed, medication, and technical instruction to make the chickens grow as fast and as cheaply as possible. In exchange, the growers supply the housing, utilities, and labor, and the company keeps ordering equipment upgrades that the growers have to pay for themselves.
This system allows large agribusiness corporations to control food production and drive small family farmers off their land, concentrating money and power at the top of the pyramid and debt and poverty at the bottom. Once proudly independent family farmers are left with a grim choice: either sign one-sided, exploitative contracts with the poultry industry, or give up their farms that may have been in the family for generations. Is it any wonder that for many the only way out is suicide?
Plucked and Burned is an important book that sheds much needed light on the inner workings of the powerful American poultry industry that exploits workers and birds alike. Those interested in reading a well-written, timely, realistic tale of corporate power and greed and the fear, fraud, poverty, arson, suicide, and murder that it can lead to will not be disappointed by this page-turner of a book."
- Charles Patterson, Ph.D., author of ETERNAL TREBLINKA: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust
"Sylvia Tomlinson presents more than just another murder mystery in her novel, Plucked and Burned . Set in the lush pastoral of chicken country, the novel portrays the lives of America's new, homegrown serfs - the poultry growers. Tomlinson's research is meticulous, and growers will recognize themselves and their neighbors as they unravel the mystery of Bruce Miller's death. This is a book that is aimed beyond the subculture of poultry growers - anyone who eats should read this book and question the philosophy behind our nation's growing corporate method of food production."
- Sunni Thibodeau, Texarkana Gazette
"Plucked and Burned completely captures the life and sadly the death of the poultry farmer. This book is the key that opens the door to the real world of the poultry industry so that others can see its unfairness and ugliness. Poultry farmers cannot be away from the farm to walk the halls of the legislative buildings to tell their stories of unfairness and corruption to government officials. Plucked and Burned can deliver the story to the people that can change things, and take the reader into a world of lies, and deception. A fictional novel based on facts, Plucked and Burned will leave you wanting Sylvia Tomlinson to write a sequel."
- Kay Doby, President: North Carolina Contract Poultry Growers
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