Cindy M. (RenascenceC) reviewed on 7/30/2010 + 77 more book reviews

This book surprises at first because of its being about coal mining in Alabama, of all places, but the atmosphere and the characters remind me of what I liked about *The Waltons* on t.v. years ago. Unfortunately, there's a bit of the t.v. image of Depression-era life in this book, with incongruities. For example, the mother of the family, Leta, is mentioned a number of times having bare and dirty feet, but her teen daughters wear stockings and shoes just for going to school. The family is poor enough that they almost never eat meat (though the daddy is always giving it away to folks), and one daughter visits a rich friend in town and is amazed at the food on the table, but her own family has one of the first automobiles owned in Carbon Hill. Plus, Leta makes biscuits at least once by adding milk to her flour BEFORE adding the fat. No way.

Those things just bug me, but I felt the story had a beautiful roundness to it, with believable attitudes and resolutions, other than Leta not believing the truth about the well. I'm actually using one beautiful description of the Birmingham cityscape, reminiscent of Dickens, as an illustration in a writing class I'm teaching this year. :-)

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