About me
Jerry Madden
This is a love story that unfolds in a place that no longer exists. It is set in the Upper Ohio Valley in the 1960s. The author knows this place and period well, having grown up there in the 1960s and built a life and career elsewhere. Jerry Madden grew up in the Steubenville area and was one of nine children. He is a graduate of Catholic Central High School and the College of Steubenville. Steubenville is located on the Ohio River about thirty miles from the river’s head waters in Pittsburgh, where the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers meet. After a stint in the USMC (R), Jerry went to law school and has practiced law in Washington, D.C. since 1979. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife, Cynthia S. Madden, a retired elementary school teacher.
Love’s never easy, even in easier times, like the 1950s and ‘60s in the Ohio Valley. The steel industry was booming. Immigrant families were rising into the American middle class.
About The Book
Steel Valley
Coming of Age in the Ohio Valley in the 1960s: A Love Story
This is a love story takes place in the Upper Ohio Valley in the 1960s when two seemingly permanent forces—the steel industry and tuition free parochial schools run by Catholic nuns—were at their zeniths. As those pillars started to crumble and fall away Jack Clark and Laurie Carmine come of age and step of their broad shoulders and into the American mainstream.
As Jack Clark and Laurie Carmine spent years searching for their separate futures, they were also stumbling toward love, but unexpected events provide seemingly insurmountable headwinds. Although the life that supported their youth is falling away, the values instilled in them prepared them to participate fully in the American mainstream, either together or apart.