Strange as This Weather Has Been

This novel relays in story form lives lived in the hollars below a form of coal "mining" called by many Mountain Top Removal. What is happening in these communities is real. The cost on lives, land, and streams is high. Pancake's Strange as This Weather Has Been: A Novel helps bring this home for all of us.

Thank you for this great book. I love the real Appalachian dialect. This dialect is music to my ears. The coal industry is killing us here in Appalachia. The burning of coal is poisoning our babies all over America.

This novel should be required reading for EVERY high school student, teacher, politician, preacher, and resident of Central Appalachia!! Ann Pancake has captured the spirit & beauty of Appalachian culture, as well as the horrors that many mountain community residents now face from Mountain Top Removal mining. This is a MUST read for anyone who has any ties to Central Appalachia and for anyone who cares about what is happening to our planet. The damage done by MTR is the "front end" of Global Warming; reading this book will awaken you to the true cost of your energy usage. I hope copies of the book are in EVERY school & college library in my home state, West Virginia, and being circulated throughout the region. Thank you, Ms. Pancake, for your prophetic & sensitive work!

In The Jungle: The Uncensored Original Edition, Upton Sinclair portrayed the horrors of the meat processing industry; readers were shocked and indignant. Reforms soon followed. One can only hope that Pancake's current book has an equal impact on her readers. Her new novel reminds us that West Virginia has a long history of wealthy industry moguls stripping the state of its natural resources and leaving the population with little to show for their hard work. In the early 20th Century, the people of Southern West Virginia bravely stood up for their rights during the Coal Mine Wars. A good expose for that history can be found in the movie, Matewan. Ann Pancake's book fast forwards to the beginning of the 21st Century where West Virginians are again facing grave threats to their heritage, their lands, and their lives. Pancake tells us in her book how the land AND the people are used up and discarded. Mountain-top Removal mining is destroying one of America's greatest natural assets for short-term gain by a few individuals. The land left behind is ruined and sometimes toxic. The lives of the people who live there are often ruined as well. The mountains are leveled. The valleys, the hollows, and the streams are filled with debris and lost. People who have lived on the land for generations are displaced with no home to re-visit; their homes and their beloved mountains are gone. As Americans we are all diminished. To be clear, this is NOT just an expose on Mountain Top Removal Mining. As a novel it is quite enjoyable and well-crafted. Aside from the mining subtext, she tells a very compelling human story about love, relationships, and independence. As you might expect, it is not a happy story. But, Pancake captures the essence of West Virginians as few have managed to do. She plays with language related to feeling in a way that brings the reader quite close to the people she is portraying. Character development is excellent. Her chapters cycle through the points-of-view of each of her characters. It is a beautifully told story. Authors writing about West Virginia often try very hard to write in dialect. Pancake to her great credit does not. As in her earlier work, Given Ground (Bakeless Prize), the grammar spoken by her characters is not always perfect, but it does not distract from the story as is often the case in the work of others. Her book is far more authentic. She portrays the people of Southern West Virginia with the dignity and respect they deserve. Pancake tells the story of West Virginians, their heritage, and the spiritual bond they have to the land. But, underlying this is the feeling that the land and the mountains are the heritage of every American and every human being. Hopefully, books like this will spur change and not be a chronicle for future generations of things being lost that can never be recovered. I Highly Recommend This Book!

This is a delicately told story of a working class family and their very real struggle between making a living and the destruction of the land they love. This novel stirred me on so many levels: the personal stories of working class people, the stories of how families cope, the environmental and economic conflicts related to the practice of mountain top removal. Long after I finished reading this book, I still find myself thinking about aspects of the novel. Pancake's prose is honest, spare, and unsentimental. I recommend this book.