WAITING FOR THE EARTHQUAKE

Eddie Dunaway, 28-year-old father of three, is a drudge in a San Francisco post office who is trying to rouse the workers to strike. But Eddie is a tiresome, pathetic, flaccid sort and as far as the union members are concerned, ""Eddie gives them the creeps"" (as well he might). The government tries to bust the union by urging a crazy black woman to hit people on the head with a lead pipe at meetings and by planting an informer, Jacob Nance, who insinuates his way and becomes Eddie's friend. The strike is successful, the workers' demands are met, but Eddie is deeply changed by Nance's betrayal, and (Quaker though he is) he finds himself beating up Nance and running over his legs with a truck. A latterday proletarian novel which is not likely to revive the genre.