Overview
Three powerful men converge on the banks of the Red Cedar River in the early 1900s in southern Minnesota—George Albert Hormel, founder of what will become the $10 billion food conglomerate Hormel Foods; Alpha LaRue Eberhart, the author’s paternal grandfather and Hormel’s Executive Vice President and Corporate Secretary; and Ransome Josiah Thomson, Hormel’s comptroller. Over ten years, Thomson will embezzle $1.2 million from the company’s coffers, nearly bringing the company to its knees.
The Butcher, The Embezzler, and The Fall Guy opens in 1922 as George Hormel calls Eberhart into his office and demands his resignation. Hailed as the true leader of the company he’d helped Hormel build—is Eberhart complicit in the embezzlement? Far worse than losing his job and the great wealth he’d rightfully accumulated is that his beloved young wife, Lena, is dying while their three children grieve alongside. Of course, his story doesn’t end there.
In scale both intimate and grand, Cherington deftly weaves the histories of Hormel, Eberhart, and Thomson within the sweeping landscape of our country’s early industries, along with keen observations about business leaders gleaned from her thirty-five-year career advising top company executives. The Butcher, The Embezzler, and The Fall Guy equally chronicles Cherington’s journey from blind faith in family lore to a nuanced consideration of the three men’s great strengths and flaws—and a multilayered, thoughtful exploration of the ways we all must contend with the mythology of powerful men, our reverence for heroes, and the legacy of a complicated past.
About the Author
I use stories to inspire women to claim their innate power as we collectively change the world. I grew up around a crowd of literary giants from Robert Frost to Allen Ginsberg to James Dickey, tugging at their pantlegs for a little attention. Listening to the cadence and rhythm of poets and novelists reading their latest verses I slowly found my voice. My stories start a central question: What does it mean to have a complicated family legacy? Why do we continue to mythologize powerful men? How do we take our seat at the table? What consequences arise when we speak our truth? These questions, grounded in personal experience, research and investigation translate into my essays and books. But that’s what I work on every morning. Every afternoon I’m outside–hiking, walking, biking, gardening, skiing in wild places as big as Patagonia and Penobscot Bay or as small as a neighborhood trail or park. Moving on my own or with friends seeds my writing. Writing on my own or with friends seeds my next quest. My first book, the award-winning memoir, Poetic License, was named 2021 Eric Hoffer Book Award 1st Runner-Up in Memoir; 2021 Eric Hoffer Award Grand Prize Short List; 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist in Best Cover Design; 2020 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Finalist in Autobiography and Memoir. My second nonfiction/memoir will be out in April 2023 from She Writes Press. Subscribe to Gretchen’s newsletter to get free book chapter and more at http://www.gretchencherington.com
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