Those who enjoyed Catherine Marshall’s Christy will enjoy the way faith is incorporated into Valerie Banfield’s Wish Me Joy, West Virginia. Those who enjoyed Kim Michele Richardson’s The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek and Donna Everhart’s The Saints of Swallow Hill will like way Banfield delivers the historical aspects of a small town. And anyone […]
“Their Houses,” by Meredith Sue Willis
Reviewed by Donna Meredith The richly drawn characters in Meredith Sue Willis’s latest novel, Their Houses, are stumbling about in an effort to meet one of the most basic needs Maslow identifies in his famous hierarchy, a need which must be met before people can move on to find love, esteem, and self actualization. They […]
“Blood Creek,” by Kimberly Collins
Reviewed by Donna Meredith Kimberly Collins deftly plants the vicious Paint-Creek/Cabin Creek coal wars at the heart of the first installment in her Mingo Chronicles historical series. The novel is titled Blood Creek (Blue Mingo Press, 2019). While the West Virginia and Kentucky mine wars have been the focus of both fiction and nonfiction, Collins […]
February Read of the Month: “Waters Run Wild,” by Andrea Fekete
Reviewed by Phyllis Wilson Moore Andrea Fekete’s first novel, Waters Run Wild (Guest Room Press, 2018) is a brutal story of the struggle for equity in the West Virginia coal fields in the industry’s early days. Before federal laws and unions intervened, workers were exploited in every imaginable way. Unions were prohibited, wages were low. […]
“Depth of Winter,” by Craig Johnson
Reviewed by Phyllis Wilson Moore In Craig Johnson’s fourteenth novel, Depth of Winter (Viking, 2018), Sheriff Walt Longmire is far from Absaroka County, Wyoming. He is in Mexico on a desperate lone-wolf mission to rescue his only daughter from a vicious drug cartel. He has no authority. He has no passport. He is about to experience […]