Doubleheaders aren’t limited to baseball and mutant calves
I come from a school system that adored the book report. A simple pedagogical device to force young children to read and write (and not much else). Fortunately I’ve always enjoyed reading, so this failed to quell the reader in me. Thank Goodness. I would have had a much sadder life without the parallel universe provided by a constellation of authors.
Over the last few days, I’ve gone through two library books. My local branch has a rather limited (is there a superlative for “rather limited”? Note to self; research this) collection of literature in English, so I’ve done a reasonable job of surveying this motley shelf set. And oddly, never noticed these two wonderful works by the same author.
I have a special place in my imagination for the coal mine. I’m not from mining country, although I spent four years just down the road from a “seam”. Most of the black rock I came into contact with had fallen from rail cars, or was bound for the pot stoves and furnaces around me. But, I’m curious enough to have visited mines on two different summer vacations; think of it as the scenic road to hell. These books are set in the mining country of the Appalachian mountains, which has its own seam of economic problems.
Without going into anecdotal detail (this is NOT a book report), the author has managed to flesh out the various characters in a way that I rarely see in my standard “bus books”. Yes, I did read on the bus. And on the couch, and in bed, and in the kitchen and in the car. Not out by the pool, though. Too clean and sunny to due justice to these books.
I have to class Back Roads and Coal Run by Tawni O’Dell among some of the best books I have read in the last few years. Oprah agrees. These two novels are definitely moving on to the next round in Hollywood. Pick your own order to read them, but do so. If you want more background, check out www.tawniodell.com to get the usual lowdown. I’m just glad to see that there is a third book in print. I’ll leave you while I check out my possibilities at Amazon.
To close my opening analogies, these two books are definitely out of the park, and circus tents sometimes showcase rare and unusal talents.
