My political science professor said it best. I think if you go anywhere, even my neighborhood in Houston, TX, you will find houses representative of people who would throw trash out the front door and leave it there. It was just down the mountain from a hand-crafted beaut of a mansion. I've also stayed with friends in a 'hollow' in Tennessee and there was one house that would have fit in well with these shown in the book, with a mule being used to plow the garden and everything. I've been to West Virginia and have seen nothing of what I see in this book. Note here that there are only ten oral histories in the book. Yet, when taken as a whole, I believe the book can not possibly be an accurate portrayal of the people of West Virginia. In Light’s poignant images and in their own distinctive voices the residents of Coal Hollow―a fictional composite of the communities the Lights surveyed―reveal how the intersection of mountain culture and the greed of the coal companies produced the most powerful economy in the world yet brought crushing poverty to a region of once-proud people.

What emerges is a complex portrait of people locked into an intricate web of geography, history, and unfettered profiteering. Ken and Melanie Light traveled hundreds of miles through rugged, isolated terrain recording the stories of a range of people whose lives were shaped by retired miners, men and women who have been jobless their entire lives, a contemporary coal baron, a justice of the State Supreme Court of West Virginia, a writer who bravely ran for governor on a third party ticket, and people who returned to the hills when their lives failed elsewhere.

This remarkable book presents arresting black and white photographs and powerful oral histories that chronicle the legacy of coalmining in southern West Virginia. Coal is still king in much of Appalachia, yet the heritage and history of the people who enabled the United States to become an economic superpower in the Industrial age are slipping away.

Coal Hollow by Melanie Light