I generally steer clear of books with grim covers but Kay Byer recommended this so enthusiastically that I got a copy. Oh my goodness this is a wonderful book. I think that a lot of you all would fall in love with Kettle Bottom.
A sequence of poems (with a few bits of prose) told from various points of view of folks in a West Virginia mining community during the 'mine wars' of the early Twenties, the voices are true and the stories are perfectly told. It reads like a novel by Lee Smith -- I devoured it in one sitting and wished for more.
Thank you, Kay. This is a gem.
2 comments:
Kind of a perfect illustration of the old axiom "Never judge a book by its cover."
And I probably wouldn't normally seek out books about hard time in the West Virginia coal mine but This . . . oh, it's beautiful.
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