Booklist and Notes

BOOKLIST AND NOTES George Brosi Angle, Barbara. Those That Mattered. New York: Crown, 1994. 307 pages. Hardback in dust jacket. $22.00. In 1979 Crossroads Press published Rinker by Barbara Angle, a novel of a day in the life of Jake Rinker, a coal miner. Thus it is curious that her 1994 novel is being promoted as a first novel. Angle's protagonist is a woman miner living in a West Virginia mining camp. The novelist worked as a coal miner for several years until an accident injured one of her arms and precluded her from keeping a job underground. "Angle writes clean prose with insightful detail. . . . She skips the region's humor and charm and portrays only the harsh, hopeless aspects of coal mining. Her characters rarely laugh, and their lives vary only in degrees of hardship." —Amy Hogg in the Lexington Herald-Leader. Baber, Bob Henry. A Picturefrom Life's Other Side. Richwood, West Virginia: self-published, 1994. 118 pages. Trade paperback. $10.00. Reared in the Northeastern suburbs, Baber has never lost a smidgen of the love he felt as a little boy on visits to West Virginia. He has retained his youthful enthusiasm and his glee at a well-turned phrase. Who can resist such whimsical delights as "He keeps clean as a cat; eats out of the garbage and drinks out of the commode"? This spirit renders even Baber's most righteously indignant poems more palatable than proud. Collett, Dexter. Bibliography of Theses and Dissertations Pertaining to Southern Appalachian Literature: 1912-1991. Berea, Kentucky: Appalachian Imprints, 1995. 136 pages with index. Hardback. $30.00. This book is a good resource for all who are researching any topic related at all to the literature of the Appalachian South. Researchers can use this book to ascertain which theses and dissertations have been George Brosi sells both new and out-of-print books through the mail, and brings a display of books for sale to regional events. His address is Appalachian Mountain Books, Route 2, Whittier, North Carolina 28789. His phone number is 704-586-5319. 69 written about the poets, story-writers, and novelists of the region. There is a section of creative-writing theses and dissertations on regional writers , and the book is supplemented by sections on folklore and early travel narratives. The foreword provides a valuable narrative introduction to scholarship on Appalachian literature. The author, who grew up in a Harlan County, Ky., coal camp, completed his own creative thesis under the late Walter Tevis at Ohio University in 1975. Conley, Robert J. The Dark Way. New York: Bantam, a 1994 reprint of a 1993 release. 180 pages. Mass-market paperback. $4.99. One of the most popular and prolific Cherokee writers today, the author is a native of Oklahoma. The Dark Way is Book Two of a series of novels, The Real People, which portrays in fiction the early prehistory of the Cherokee. It tells a dramatic story, based loosely on anthropological evidence, of the abuse of power by religious leaders and a revolt against that abuse. The setting is the Southern Appalachians in the middle of this millennium. Conley is a popular writer who appeals both to young readers and to the general public. _____________. Nickajack. New York: Bantam, a 1994 reprint of a 1992 release. 197 pages. Mass-market paperback. $3.99. Southern Appalachian Cherokee Indians had to leave their ancestral homes in the Southern Appalachians and go to Oklahoma in the 1830s. There were horrific factional fights among those who acquiesced in the removal at different times and various stages of the process. The greatest of these confrontations was between the Ridge and Ross family factions. Nickajack portrays for the first time in fiction by a Cherokee that terrible , exciting time. "A gripping, sensitive, and poignant book. I found myself asking not 'How much of this is true?' but 'how little of this is fiction?' "—Don Coldsmith. Covington, Dennis. Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1995. 240 pages, illustrated with photographs. Hardback in dust jacket. $20.00 The author's grandparents came to Birmingham from the North Alabama hills in the years...