At book club this week, we discussed place affecting story line. The book was Song Yet Sung, set on the eastern shores of Maryland in the 1850s, with dirt poor farmers and oyster men. We agreed the setting was critical to the plot but soon our conversation moved on to the ability of a well written story to shatter stereotypes. I recognized this as yet another motive underneath my reading about States. Yes, I have stereotypes of Cajuns, cowboys and coalminers. And the books I've been reading have dimensionalized these iconic Americans into thoughtful, honest and complex persons.
Highcoal is a company town of 624 people. What people there are who do not work for the mine have jobs or responsibilities that directly support it and keep the town together: the constable is a company employee, the pastor does an occasional shift, the general store owner outfits the miners. It's one of those towns, like Wilmington, NC, where testosterone is in the air, here perhaps the under scent of coal dust. All the men have nicknames that are the masculine quick label of each person's family or significant live experience. Cable, son of Wire, is the mine manager lovestruck to marry a high-power, manic energy woman named Song, an Asian-American acquisitions negotiator for her wealthy father. As soon as Song reaches Highcoal, the young marriage begins to fall apart. There are echoes in this story of Next Step in the Dance, with a woman fighting against her town, its population and her husband in order to figure out who she is. Chapter 19 begins with Song waking up, not knowing where she is, feeling disoriented, frightened and out of place in Highcoal, in herself as well.
The story moves on to almost formulaic events: corruption and crime in the mine and a disaster trapping the main characters. Yes, the book details all aspects of mining: dangers, safety and sales. It presents beautiful scenery of West Virginia mountains and their inaccessibility. It is inexcusably chauvinistic about coal mining and its importance to America. Song starts out as being repelled by mining: it's filthy dirty, low class, and somewhat quaintly last century. This bias prevails throughout the country, not only in the environmentalists concern about acid rain, but more broadly based to seem to be an outright repugnance towards heavy labor and dirty blue collar jobs.
An appendix included in the book is the remarks that Hickam gave at the memorial for the Sago miners in January 2006. They are the most moving words in the volume.
I have linked Hickam's website to the blog and emailed him last night. If you go to his website, you will see that he had a serious operation recently. I wished him well. If I do happen to hear back from him, I will add his reply to this posting.
Later that day ... Mr. Hickam answered already. He is recuperating in St John's and has a slow Internet connection so he promises we will hear more next week. Thought I'd insert my email and his reply.
Mr. Hickam: Along with several of my best friends, I have started a blog with a pledge to read and review over fifty books this year, each set in one of the great States of the USA. I selected Red Helmet for West Virginia after having read October Sky several years ago. That book resonated in me, a woman who as a teenager set off model rockets wth the boys in high school and who grew up to have a son who went to space camp and hung pictures and flight badges in his room from all the Apollo astronauts.
Reading Red Helmet once again proved to me that there are only six degrees of separation, if not fewer, between everyone. The copy of the book I have has Joshilyn Jackson's review on the back cover. I had chosen her Between Georgia as on of our States. When I emailed her, she responded that she had wanted to comment on my blog but had a difficult time signing on. She mentioned that she wanted to tell me which of selected books she particularly liked. I am certain now Red Helmet was one of her must read recommendations. Also in the back of the book are the comments from Stephen Coonts, comparing you to Mark Twain. I also picked Letters from Hawaii for our 2009 resolution reading, so I guess I knew intuitively which authors to put in this august group.
I will link your website to my blog, theslackersbookclub.blogspot.
<http://theslackersbookclub.
visit).
To get intrusively personal, I am wishing you all the best. My prayers are with you to obtain the strength and patience you need to recover. Illness is an ironic blessing, a wonderful time to reevaluate and realize things have gone otherwise remarkably well and we can be quite happy in who we ended up being. I have already undergone two bouts of cancer: breast cancer in 2001 -- just as my son was graduating from high school and leaving New York to go to school in Texas -- and again last year, when I had aggressive uterine cancer, known as clear cell cancer, I guess fairly uncommon. During this last go-round, my husband was also undergoing several heart surgeries, ending up in a quadruple bypass. We could not take care of each other but, thankfully, had neighbors as wholesome and loving as those you've known in West Virginia. I should clarify that I come from "upstate" New York, not the City, where it's unlikely anyone would bring over Thanksgiving dinner consisting of both lasagna for the menfolk and traditional turkey and the fixins for me.
Which brings me back to Red Helmet and Song and her NYC background. At first, I thought her being Asian-American was a contrivance to make her even more unlike Highcoal natives. But by the end of your story, I was tearing up at how wonderfully she learned to become a "simple man" by learning to be a novice miner. I compare her to Colette and her "better than the locals" attitude when learning to love T-bub in Tim Gautreaux' Next Step in the Dance.
Our reading about places this year has proven that stereotyped don't hold and that family and community anchor one's soul and well-being.
My illnesses have convinced me not to radically change my life but to document it more and to share it with as many who want to read more about human experiences in all their universally unique iterations. You have shared your life and perceptions already with so many. My thanks and I hope to bring more readers to come to know your talent and insights. All the best.
And Mr. Hickam's response:
Thank you. Linda will write more next week. Right now, we're on St. John on a slow modem. I'm glad you liked Red Helmet, Song and Cable.
I'm also glad to meet a fellow cancer survivor.
Best wishes,
Homer Hickam
www.homerhickam.com
And then Linda wrote back:
Hi ... what a great letter, thank you -- you are quite the writer yourself! I am Linda, Homer's wife and assistant and we are back from our trip now. Homer is doing great, cancer free and back to all his old activities and exercising. As with you, we had great friends and family to support us. We used caringbridge.com to keep up with all the wonderful well-wishers, a great idea for a siteto help with communciations when someone is ill. Do you know it?
What a project for your book club and thank you for picking Red Helmet to feature. We met Joshilyn on a book talk panel event and she is a fun gal, we count her as a friend and love her writing. Coonts is from WV too, and we know him a little ... writers need to stick together indeed!
Not sure if you need anything from us about RH -- see its page here for some neat links, photos of the first women miners, a scholarship we started for the children of miners and a petition for a national miners' day: http://www.homerhickam.com/
Thank you for helping people keep reading GREAT books! Linda Hickam
I just finished The Red Helmet and found it an interesting book. Our goal ( OK, we're slackers but we can still have a goal) has been to essentially "read through America" and see if in an armchair fashion we can get a feel for our 50 states. I certainly feel as if I know Highcoal ( and alot about coal mining) West Virginia and think that the town is almost another character in this well-paced novel. I'm not 100 per cent sure that I "bought" the romance between the Song and Cable but I liked their characters and wound up with the impression that I knew these folks.
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