The story of one place, one family (and yet, hauntingly true of many families throughout the south Wales coalfield) whose narrative takes us as far as the West Indies in the time of slavery, the high seas off Singapore, and the pogroms of Tsarist Ukraine. At the heart of Sam Adams' brilliant and remarkable book is a sense of belonging, a sense of place. The red-tinted bed of a slim stream rising in the moorland overlooking a small, isolated unpopulated...