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Braddock-born novelist Thomas Bell, circa 1955.

 

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Credit: Courtesy of Special Collections, Carnegie Mellon University Libraries, Pittsburgh PA
 

Born Adalbert Thomas Belejcak to Lemko Rusyn parents in Braddock, PA, Thomas Bell worked in the steel mills there before turning to writing full time in 1933.  Bell completed five novels before his death of cancer in 1961.  His reputation as a writer increased dramatically in 1976 when the University of Pittsburgh Press reissued Out of This Furnace, first published in 1941, to wide acclaim.

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