Ray Welling (BSJ81)

Byline for the Dead is a historical mystery-thriller that interweaves stories from different eras as two journalists, five decades apart, work to unravel the truths about one of the most violent labor strikes in American history.

In 1984, Gray Wheeler is a disillusioned young reporter working for The Toledo Sword. Assigned to cover the 50th anniversary of the Auto-Lite strike—known as the “Battle of Toledo,” a bloody, five-day labor uprising involving 10,000 union workers and 1,300 Ohio National Guard troops—Gray stumbles across a mystery left unpublished a half-century earlier by another young reporter that connects the 1934 massacre to present-day political machinations.
Byline for the Dead explores themes of journalistic integrity, institutional memory, and the power of the past to shape the present.

As Gray confronts Toledo’s forgotten history and the ghost of his own unfulfilled ambitions, he must decide whether exposing the truth is worth the cost—especially when the truth fights back.