(bell dings) (typewriter rattles) (thoughtful music) - I'm Eli Cranor, and this is Broiler.

You've got Luke Jackson, who's a plant manager.

You've got his wife, Mimi Jackson.

He's trying to move up the ladder in this business, and because he is doing that, he's upping the production rate.

He's making it even harder and harder on honest workers.

Then you have Gabriela Menchaca and you have Edwin Saucedo.

Because of Luke pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing for more and more and more, it sets off a chain of events that caused those four people to just come crashing together.

(dramatic music) - It's a story of four people who are really in their own ways on the edge of desperation.

And I wonder what it is about desperation that just makes for great setting and character.

- Mm.

If you really boil it down, this book is about the chicken processing industry in Arkansas, and it's really about motherhood, and more specifically, miscarriage.

As I went on tour for this book, I was having to talk about those things.

My wife got to go with me on the first leg of it.

And so I was trying to tell some of our experiences, and then I was trying to compare it to, you know, chicken processing.

And she goes, "Eli, you're missing one word."

Like there's one word that connects those two worlds.

- [Jeremy] Desperation.

- We were desperate when we were entering those stages of our parenthood.

These workers are desperate, you know, it's a desperate industry.

And so, yeah, you nailed it.

Desperation is really the word of the book.

(dramatic music) My wife is always my first reader, and so she usually just gives me a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

You know, it either passes the test or it doesn't pass the test.

But for this one, it was so much more than that.

It was making sure that those details of miscarriage, new motherhood, that they were at least ringing true to her experience and our experience.

Because you can't write to everybody's experience.

But I'll tell you what came of that, trying to write through that pain and then sharing it with my wife, it was almost like therapy.

- It's almost cathartic.

- It was so cathartic for both of us.

(dramatic music) - Eli, it was a real pleasure.

- Yeah.

Thank you.

- And thank you for watching A Word on Words.

I'm Jeremy Finley.

Remember, keep reading.

(bell dings) - [Eli] For every American dream, there is a corresponding nightmare.

Every fortune, even a small one, is built on the back of some great sin.