Pilebuck
By DUTTON
SAM GALLAGHER took the hard way when he went after saboteurs in one of our largest shipyards. He got a job as pilebuek, and “a good pilebuck is part carpenter, part steel-man, part rigger, part mill-wright, with a liberal shot of just plain mule.”The plain mule in Sam pulled him through the first hard days when he stood waist-deep in icy water to saw piling, when he fought Kelly, the foreman, and later when the going really got rough. Nobody — not even his brother Jeff nor his old sweetheart, Lea — could be sure of this new, evasive Sam with his ready-made family and his strange readiness to quit. The story is melodrama, but the writing is swift, tough, knowledgeable.