Ridge Valley: Living Life in a Coal MIning Town

Minor splash mark on bottom edge of book, visible on end papers and bottom text edge. Front hinge is pulling apart at the top, about an inch. Clean text, solid binding. Ridge Valley is the story of a mining town located int he vast Connellsville Coal and Coke Region in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Founded in the early 1900s, the Ridge Valley mine was worked by hundreds of European immigrants to extract its treasure.Growing up in the Patch in the late teens and early 1920s are teenagers John, Jerry, Bull and Corky who will face a calamity in the mine that immediately propels them into adulthood. In Carbon Hill, Alabama, Leroy Johnson, a Negro teen, travels north with his father Rufus to seek a better life in the coalfields of PA. John, Jerry and Leroy meet an become friends. The miners, in order to gain a fair wage, attempt to form a union. They go on strike and challenge the industrialists who use their power to prevent any union organizational plans. John, Jerry, Leroy and Bull become directly involved with a clash of wills between the two groups.