Super Short Summary

In Packinghouse Daughter, Cheri Register recounts her childhood in Albert Lea, Minnesota, focusing on the significant 1959 Wilson & Co. meat packer's strike. Blending personal memoir with historical research, she draws on newspaper articles, state records, company archives, and interviews to shed light on the strike's impact. Register's coming-of-age story highlights her ambivalent relationship with her working-class roots against her academic aspirations, offering a nuanced portrayal of a pivotal event in American unionization history and the broader socio-economic shifts of the time. The book contains elements of violence and injury.