Author Bill Hohlfeld Explores the Deadly Side of Immigration in ‘Dying to Make a Living’
Bill Hohlfeld’s “Dying to Make a Living” is a noir-ish murder mystery involving the death of a young immigrant construction worker killed on a New York City job site.
By Joe Maniscalco
Right now, Donald Trump is prepping to make good on a campaign pledge to begin deporting millions of hard-working immigrants on Day One of his new administration.
He managed to scapegoat and deport approximately 350,000 working people during his first go ‘round in office beginning in 2017. About three years prior, his predecessor Barack Obama ejected some 432,000 people—the highest annual total since they started keeping records, according to the AP.
That’s right, the pro-business bosses—regardless of the “R” or a “D” next to their names—have been giving immigrant workers in this country the shaft for a long time—whether through the constant threat of deportation, rampant wage theft, or unsafe working conditions.
All of which, is apropos when talking about “Dying to Make a Living,” the latest engrossing novel from building trades veteran, labor educator, and academic Bill Hohlfeld. In his debut outing, Hohlfeld introduced the character of “Val Purce” and connected his construction worker-turned-private investigator exploits to Arthurian legend. This time, Hohlfeld turns his gruff sensibilities and noir-ish eye to what he calls the “vanishing American workforce.”
“What I also tried to do was envelop that into the immigrant experience—because we are, as we all know, a nation of immigrants,” Hohlfeld explains. “And this latest nation of immigrants is undergoing the same type of ruthless exploitation that was going on one hundred years ago.”
As it so often has and continues to do in real life—the ruthless exploitation of immigrant workers depicted in “Dying to Make a Living” turns bloody when a young man named Julio Morales—a student in Val Purce’s Business Writing for the Construction Industry class—is mysteriously killed on the job site.
Morales’ cousin Joe knows very well how dangerous, and even deadly, the construction industry is. But he still isn’t buying the idea that his safety-obsessed kin met his grisly end because of some horrible on-the-job “accident.”
“‘I knew Julio,” Joe tells Val. “I’m tellin’ you he even got into it a little bit one time with the foreman because he asked for safety glasses when he was burning some…whatchamacallit…rebar with a torch.’”
Reluctant to retrieve his trench coat and magnifying glass from moth balls just yet, Val eventually agrees to investigate Morales’ untimely death and enlists the help of Lou Riodan—a retired NYPD cop and cyber security expert who also teaches at the same Construction Career Institute as Val.
“Dying to Make a Living” author Bill Hohlfeld at the podcasting mic.
Hohlfeld brings an authenticity to the proceedings that can only come from a 30-year career bending rebar, often times hundreds of feet off the ground on construction sites throughout New York City. And he knows well his cast of earnest young immigrants giving their all to succeed in the highly-demanding building trades industry, and depicts their challenges in similarly frank terms.
“They would also come to realize,” Hohlfeld writes, “that the pyramid was pretty tiny at the top, and the handful of guys with advanced degrees in either engineering or architecture made all the real money, or at least all the money that wasn’t being sucked up by the owners, Real Estate Investment Trust parasites, insurance brokers and attorneys who were in line before them.”
Despite his deep working class roots and affinity for the American labor movement, however, it would be a big mistake to characterize Hohlfeld as anything resembling a “radical socialist.”
“Every new group of immigrants gets exploited until they get to a position in society where they gain some agency,” Hohlfeld says. “That's our history. Here's the thing: I'm not, like a radical socialist. I actually believe in capitalism. But my issue is that capitalism, being as powerful an engine as it is—it needs governors. And we need to make sure that those governors are put in place, so that people don't get hurt.”
Hohlfeld describes growing up in a “very white neighborhood” in New York City and working with a lot of people who were also white during his long building trades career. But, over time, the author says, that changed to reflect the true diversity of the American working class. For Hohlfeld, the increasing diversity did not diminish the working class’ shared ethos as he always understood it. It strengthened it.
“There are just certain things about working people that are universal,” he says. “We all want the same things. I mean, it's Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? We want food, clothing, shelter, security. And at some point, if we have all of that, we want some sense of actualization when we get to the top of the pyramid.”
When he looks at a lot of what’s being published today, Hohlfeld says he often sees it split into two categories: fiction and literature. And with “Dying to Make a Living” he wanted to merge the two.
“The current wisdom is that genre fiction can be put into a category like “mystery,” or “horror,” or “erotica”—whatever it may be. And that literature is all about character development,” he says. “What I really tried to do with with this book is blend and mix those two classifications. Because, yeah, is it genre fiction? Sure. It's detective fiction. It’s a murder mystery. That's all true. But at the same time, because it's the second in a series of books about Val Purse, it's also very much about him and his growth as an individual. It's very much character-centered.”
Val Purce—like the author who created him—may be cut from the same hard canvas sailcloth as Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, but in attempting to solve the mystery at Dying to Make a Living’s core, he does learn some hard lessons. And those lessons should be familiar to every solidarity-loving trade unionist out there also struggling to make it in the coming Trump Redux.
“Nobody does anything alone,” Hohlfeld says. “We all need help. Val Purce might be the old fashioned knight of the realm—but he’s not on his own. He needs help from other people to get done what he needs to get done. I think that's an important point. Nobody does it all alone. We do this together.”