Saxton, Alexander Bright Web in the Darkness.

Saxton's earnest novel looks at the labor movement in San Francisco Bay Area shipyards during World War 2, with a focus on what today would be labeled gender and racial issues. His heroine is an African-American "Rosie the Riveter" (actually her name is Joyce Allen and she's a welder) working at the fictitious East Bay San Martin Shipyards (a stand-in for the famous World War 2 Richmond, Calif. Kaiser Shipyard facilities). Saxton soberly documents the young woman's life at the shipyard where she, like other "Negro" employees, have been shunted into a powerless auxiliary of the welders' union where she's forced to pay union dues but is denied any job rights or even real participation in union activities. Saxton follows this very decent, hard working woman as African-American co-workers and white sympathizers challenge the union on its racial and gender bias (the union comes across as a heavy in Saxton's narrative) by seeking redress from, first, President Roosevelt's independently-established Fair Employment Practices Board, and then later through the federal and state court systems. Joyce's white roommate Sally O'Regan, also a shipyard welder, takes up the cause of equality and, in a subplot, this becomes a sore of contention between Sally and her husband Tom (a naval gunner stationed aboard the fictitious Liberty ship ANDREW ROGERS, primarily in North Atlantic convoy service). Joyce's own boyfriend, an African-American artist named Charlie Gammon, is a merchant seaman who is killed somewhere in the South Pacific when his ship is attacked by Japanese forces.