Ugly to Start With
John Michael Cummings |
Jason Stevens is growing up in picturesque, historic Harpers Ferry, West Virginia in the 1970s. Back when the roads are smaller, the cars slower, the people more colorful, and Washington, D.C. is way across the mountains—a winding sixty-five miles away. Jason dreams of going to art school in the city, but he must first survive his teenage years. He witnesses a street artist from Italy charm his mother from the backseat of the family car. He stands up to an abusive husband—and then feels sorry for the jerk. He puts up with his father’s hard-skulled backwoods ways, his grandfather’s showy younger wife, and the fist-throwing schoolmates and eccentric mountain characters that make up Harpers Ferry—all topped off by a basement art project with a girl from the poor side of town. Ugly to Start Withpunctuates the exuberant highs, bewildering midpoints, and painful lows of growing up, and affirms that adolescent dreams and desires are often fulfilled in surprising ways. John Michael Cummingsis a short story writer and novelist from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. He is the award-winning author of The Night I Freed John Brown. |
Reviews
"The linked stories inUgly to Start With invite us into one boy's life on the margins of historic Harpers Ferry. With an appropriate balance of grit and wonder, John Cummings crafts a coming-of-age narrative of a son striving for the truest expression of his identity in the midst of a family and a place where he often feels like an outsider. These stories have a hard edge to them and a hard-earned wisdom, the sort we only get in retrospect if we're lucky."
Lee Martin, author of The Bright Forever and Break the Skin
By turns tender, witty and unsettling, Ugly to Start With is a strong and memorable collection. The stories are carried along by Cummings' graceful prose and pacing, and are charged with the class and racial tensions encoded in the DNA of the United States. As a group they sketch a compelling portrait of a boy [adolescent?] trying to make sense of his town, his father, and ultimately himself.
Brendan Short, author of Dream City
John Cummings’ collection of short stories, Ugly to Start With, breathes in the atmosphere of Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, which plays a central role in many of the conflicts over innocence and experience, development and preservation, insider and outsider, and nature and community. In this lively and sufficient landscape are a trio—a young boy, his mother, and his father, who face the complexities of knowledge of place. Sometimes knowing is painful. In other stories, there are momentary reprieves or insights provided by the boy’s sharp and wry view of life where “clocks had stopped long ago,” “one big tree” suffices to hide a multitude of sins, and in his crying he can hear his own future unhappiness echo through his body. This a lovely, funny, melancholy, and important collection of coming-of-age stories.
Maxine Chernoff, author of A Boy in Winter
In Ugly to Start With John Michael Cummings tells the story of a uniquely unhappy family with a gracious but disgruntled mother and an idiosyncratic, autocratic, sometimes brutal father who doesn’t believe in having guests or letting anything go to waste. The father with his extremism in self-reliance binds the family together for a while, but then is the cause of its flying apart. The stories embrace other painfully failed families and individuals– all richly human and somehow, seen though the eyes of the young main character, hopeful even in despair.
Meredith Sue Willis, author of Oradell at Sea
“In Ugly to Start With, John Michael Cummings has gathered a baker’s dozen of stories full of the warmth, innocence, and holy terrors of childhood. An auspicious debut.”
Peter Selgin, author of Drowning Lessons
“John Cummings is a prolific American short story writer and among the most talented of the rising generation of new regionalists who have inherited the mantle of Bobbie Ann Mason, Barry Hannah and Larry Brown. In Ugly to Start With, a series of thirteen interrelated stories set in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, he tackles the challenges of boyhood adventure and family conflict in a taut, crystalline style that captures the triumphs and tribulations of small-town life. Not since John Brown's raid has Harpers Ferry generated such excitement for readers. Cummings has a gift for transcending the particular experiences to his characters to capture the universal truths of human affection and suffering--emotional truths that the members of his audience will recognize from their own experiences of childhood and adolescence. Cummings is a gifted author who has paid his literary dues, publishing numerous short stories in the nation's most prestigious journals. As readers, we are fortunate that he has waited so long to produce a first collection, as he is now able to gather together the very best of his short prose Needless to say, none of his stories disappoint. Each story is a riveting psychological journey, a reminder of what it's like to be young and hopeful and uncertain. This collection has defined West Virginia's eastern panhandle as Cummings country, as much as the Salinas Valley belongs to Steinbeck or working-class Albany belongs to William Kennedy. “
Jacob Appel, author of “Dyads” and “The Vermin Episode”
West Virginia
J.R. Dodge |
West Virginia: Its Farms and Forests, Mines and Oil-Wells celebrates the state of West Virginia. Originally published in 1865 as a series of studies on mineral resources, observations on agriculture, and interviews with businessmen, West Virginia details the industrial statistics, terrain, and population of a state during its infancy. With no record of natural wealth or reported transactions of agriculture or geography prior to this overview, West Virginia sparked the curiosity of non-residents, enticing investment and settlement through descriptions of abundant natural resources and an agreeable industrial condition. With an introduction by Kenneth Bailey, this new edition of West Virginia reminds us of the state’s alluring beginning and rich, yet often exploited development. Jacob Richards Dodge (1823-1902) was born in New Boston, New Hampshire. He was the first statistician for the U. S. Department of Agriculture. When he began his work he had one clerk and when he retired in 1893, there were sixty. He became known for his ability in gathering and presenting statistics. The government sent him on two trips to Europe to observe how other countries gathered data and to share his knowledge. He was given responsibility for compiling agricultural statistics for the Tenth Census in 1880 and in 1889 he was recognized by the international community of statisticians when he received a gold medal at the Paris Exposition for his illustrations of agricultural statistics. After retiring, Dodge became an editor of the Country Gentleman and wrote numerous articles and books. He died at age eighty at Nashua, New Hampshire. |
No. 9
Bonnie E. Stewart |
Ninety-nine men entered the cold, dark tunnels of the Consolidation Coal Company’s No.9 Mine in Farmington, West Virginia, on November 20, 1968. Some were worried about the condition of the mine. It had too much coal dust, too much methane gas. They knew that either one could cause an explosion. What they did not know was that someone had intentionally disabled a safety alarm on one of the mine’s ventilation fans. That was a death sentence for most of the crew. The fan failed that morning, but the alarm did not sound. The lack of fresh air allowed methane gas to build up in the tunnels. A few moments before 5:30 a.m., the No.9 blew up. Some men died where they stood. Others lived but suffocated in the toxic fumes that filled the mine. Only 21 men escaped from the mountain. No.9: The 1968 Farmington Mine Disaster explains how such a thing could happen—how the coal company and federal and state officials failed to protect the 78 men who died in the mountain. Based on public records and interviews with those who worked in the mine, No.9 describes the conditions underground before and after the disaster and the legal struggles of the miners’ widows to gain justice and transform coal mine safety legislation. Bonnie E. Stewart is Assistant Professor of Journalism at West Virginia University. She is a former investigative reporter whose work earned The George Polk Award and the national Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service. |
Reviews
“Riveting. Chilling. Revealing. The story of Farmington Mine No. 9 belongs on everybody’s book shelf. Seventy-eight miners died during a disaster that rocked West Virginia’s coal fields 43 years ago--propelling front page headlines across the USA and a trail of safety concerns across the globe. Bonnie E. Stewart, a brilliant investigative reporter and university professor, refused to let the headlines fade away. Hail her tenacity.”
Bob Dubill, Former Executive Editor, USA TODAY
“Bonnie Stewart has written a remarkable book which deserves wide circulation. She has exhaustively researched all the documentary evidence, bolstered with scores of personal interviews. Her evidence proves without a shadow of doubt that the 78 coal miners who lost their lives in the November 20, 1968 Farmington Mine Disaster were killed because management ignored repeated personal testimony by the Farmington miners that the mine would blow up unless dangerous methane and huge collections of explosive coal dust were curbed. Those miners who repeatedly pointed out these dangers were humiliated for their efforts, and management in its greed for the almighty dollar put on intense pressure for increased production, even disabling alarm and warning systems. This book also provides fuel for those protesting mountain-top removal, by proving that the pressure for more coal must not over-ride the health and safety of human beings. “
Ken Hechler, Former Secretary of State, West Virginia
“With 78 dead and 19 never recovered, the sheer magnitude of the Farmington mine disaster focused national attention on mine safety deficiencies and led to the enactment of the first major corrective legislation in several generations. In the wake of 2010’s Upper Big Branch disaster, Bonnie Stewart’s comprehensive account is a timely reminder that all mine explosions are preventable.”
Cecil E. Roberts, International President, United Mine Workers of America