Word: mineralization
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Generations of sons have followed fathers into the pits, and into the union. A miner is never "just a miner." He is a miner, a member of a proud breed, who wrenches riches from the bowels of the earth under conditions awesomely unforgiving of mistakes. The calling produces a fierce camaraderie, expressed through the union and rooted in the Anglo-Saxon heritage of the Appalachian mountaineer...
...most of all, Sayles pins down in dialogue and detail the special bond that exists between men who work too hard. When one miner comes home coughing and can't get his breath from the black lung, let alone sleep, his father-in-law tells, him, "Just a little miner's asthma. Had it all my life," advises him to sleep with an axe-handle under his arms, and rocks contentedly beneath the pictures that line his mantle--Jesus Christ, the Kennedy brothers, and John L. Lewis...
...Harvard placekicker Gary Bosnic about his first trip to Cambridge, in the spring of his senior year at Albert Gallatin H.S. in Masontown (pop: 5000), and the son of a coal miner will tell you flat out "I couldn't wait for the day to end--I didn't want to be that far from home...
...early 20s, however, Colin is becalmed and resentful, a teacher of dull-eyed children in a coal town, a survivor of a glum and perfunctory love affair. His only vivid feeling is rancid hatred for a placid younger brother who accepts a miner's life as normal...
Some of the Laurentian material in this new novel, notably Saville's unsatisfactory love affair, conveys a rare sense of place and emotion. Yet the impression remains strong that Storey, himself a miner's son, is unable to put enough distance between author and subject. His anger does not shake itself clear, and, like the hero, the novel's impressive strength never quite finds its direction. Skow