Perhaps the most famous labor activist and union organizer in history, Mary Harris Jones was an Irish emigre who watched her husband and four children die of yellow fever, saw her modest dressmaking shop go up in flames in the Great Chicago Fire and, as a lonely, poor widow in the late 19th century, was facing a bleak future.

Then, as she approached old age and became involved in the labor movement, she reinvented herself as "Mother Jones" - a fierce advocate of unionizing coal miners, textile workers and others - and through her work with disenfranchised and abused laborers became one of the most famous Americans of her age.

Jones was a celebrated orator, a fearless supporter of workers rights and a tireless campaigner for the abolition of child labor. During her later years - chronicled in this book - Jones became a living legend; celebrated by pro-union workers across the country and demonized (and often jailed) by anti-union forces in industry and government.