WVW member Phyllis Moore sent in this suggestion for writers in need of reference books for coal mine research.
Author and poet P. J. Laska provided me with a copy of a 2005 oversize paperback book entitled. Kelly's Creek Chronicles: The Illustrated Diary of James Alexander Jones, A West Virginia Coalminer, 1870-1939. $24.50 (ISBN is 0-9711129-1-6).
Compiled by William Roosevelt Hudnall and available from Kelley's Creek Publishers, Rt. 1 Box 174A, New Canton, VA 23123, it is a researcher's delight. The language is priceless and so are the details of daily life in a coal camp.
It records the life in and around Cedar Grove (Mary Lee Settle's home) from a miner's point of view and in the period Settle wrote about in Scapegoat. This miner liked the Tompkins family and did some work for them. He also saw and heard Mother Jones.
--Phyllis
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