The pages of Lolita Hernandez's Autopsy of an Engine and Other Stories from the Cadillac Plant ring with rhythmic industrial language intermeshed with the sorrows and bewilderment of Ms Hernandez as she bears witness to the events at the company. She tunes us in to the aging, the declining, and the death of Detroit's Cadillac Motor Car Company: "one orgasmic slam after another of fixtures and furniture into gondolas and c-five pans." We watch the destruction not only of Midwestern industry, but also of all the lives the plant is survived by as people prey like vultures on the remains of the closed facility, recovering metal scraps to sell.

Read More