This novel set in 1886 Chicago features a 12-year-old African American girl whose father, a union organizer, has disappeared. Dinah Bell hears from other workers on the street that he’s been arrested. With her friends Olive and Ben, Austrian immigrants who share cramped living quarters with Dinah, her parents, and others, she follows that lead to the jail and finds him. Then he disappears again — the police have turned him over to the Pinkertons, the private detectives who often resort to violence when trying to prevent the unions from taking hold. Dinah’s loving father is one of the reasons she is so self-sufficient, but she has also learned how to survive because of the hard lessons in her daily struggle against poverty, racism, and exploitation. Her mother, who lost an arm in a factory accident and who now sees only the bad side of every situation, further burdens Dinah. Eventually, Dinah sees her mother is doing the best she can. Despite all she is up against, Harriette Gillem Robinet’s determined, spirited protagonist is remarkably upbeat. The author built her narrative around actual events, most notably the May 1, 1886, Chicago workers march that saw 80,000 people demanding an eight-hour day, and the Haymarket Riot that was its aftermath. Dinah, who works in a factory, takes part in that historic march despite threats from her employer. An extensive author’s note provides background information on the situation of immigrant and American poor in Chicago that led to the historic events behind this novel. (Ages 10–13)

Her loving father's major concern is the struggle for better working conditions in factories and mills. Her mother thinks mostly of the terrible injury she has received in a sewing factory. Therefore Dinah Bell must care for herself. But not only herself. She and two other children, Austrian immigrants who do not mind that Dinah is the child of former slaves, not only work twelve-hour days to help support their families with the three dollars a week they each earn, but they do even more. All five families that depend on them for food live together in one rat-and-roach infested room in a Chicago tenement. The children steal, though they hate being thieves.

Other concerns vanish, however, when in the spring of 1886, Dinah's father is taken prisoner by the dreaded Pinkertons -- detectives who help factory owners get rid of unions and their organizers. Now, Dinah must find where her father is being held and free him. On May first there is a march of eighty thousand workers, demonstrating for an eight-hour day. The march is why Mr. Noah Bell has been taken prisoner, and the march and its aftermath, the Haymarket Riot, put Dinah in constant danger. Yet she is determined to succeed. Her father must be freed.

Once again Harriette Gillem Robinet portrays likeable children, with their needs and struggles, against a background of real events in American history. The result is an exciting story that reveals important truths about the American past.