THE MINER’S DAUGHTER Backstory
By 1932, the West Virginia coal fields were in shambles. Following years of explosive growth after the First World War, thousands of immigrants and many small farmers left lands that had been their home for generations and moved into coal towns. During the boom years, when a good wage was to be had for anyone who could work, miners and their families enjoyed a modicum of prosperity. There were baseball leagues, theatres and bowling allies thrived. Schools were built.
This all changed long before the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Coal prices had begun to drop several years before, and miner's, paid by the ton, often in company scrip, found themselves in a vicious spiral of downward mobility when their local economy collapsed amidst a national catastrophe. Many coal companies simply shut down operations all together, actively encouraging the town to decay rather than maintaining it. Families were left stranded in mountainous hollows with few marketable skills and no transportation to get them anywhere, assuming, of course, there were jobs and places to go find.
This is the story of the Lowell family, told through the eyes of Willa, who is 16 in 1932 remembers little of that world before the grinding poverty sets in. While her brother Ves is eager to see what the new Roosevelt administration brings, Willa is more cautious; sometimes it is harder to have to stay and wait, as she does when her father and brother mine, or when they go away to find work. When a missionary comes to Riley Mines with a library of books, Willa’s eagerness to find words to express her own growing sense of self are coupled with the awareness that the world of literature seems as far removed from her life as the moon and the stars.
In 1933, Eleanor Roosevelt, acting as the eyes and ears of the President, invited by missionaries, came to several coal mining camps in West Virginia. The poverty she saw was appalling, but the strength of families like the Lowells shone through. Back in Washington, she practically single-handedly reinvigorated the Homestead Act, attempting to settle hundreds of families into new towns. It was a massive experiment – one eventually despised as “failure” by Congress and the press, but for the people given a new chance on life (such as my fictional family) it was the beginning of becoming middle class.
Although not original settlers, my family came to Eleanor Roosevelt’s town of Arthurdale, WV in 1943. My father was born there. THE MINER’S DAUGHTER is an attempt to set the record straight – to reexamine that “failure” through the eyes of those who lived it. This novel is a chance to shine a light on a forgotten – and decisive – moment of American history.