Nine Pound Hammer

Nine Pound Hammer tells the story of an outsider's descent into the coal mining industry and the generational culture that supports it. Don Rogers is an environmental engineer assigned by his company to ensure that Daggett Coal Mine is in compliance with new regulations. He enters into a world which is different from any society that he has experienced in his young life. The story takes place in the coal mining region of South Central Indiana in late October. Upon his arrival, he is regarded by the local community - in particular, the men and women that work at the mine - as an outsider sent by the company to close down a strip mine near Dugger, Indiana. In his first week at the mine. Don experiences - in very short order - the hazards of open pit mining and the consequences of complacency. Without knowing precisely the cause, he and the other miners are the victims of outright sabotage by persons unknown who falsely believe that slowing down coal production will increase the longevity of the mine. He responds to the godlike status of the mine superintendent with respect and faces down the bullying of his son, Larry, without fear. When he begins to think that the situation is more than he can handle, he is steered through adversity by an old Welsh coal miner, Conner, and the safety manager, Ray. He finds beauty, grace and tolerance where he did not expect to find it; in the land surrounding the coal mine but also the café owner, Dolores Cooper, and the superintendent’s secretary, Katie Johnson. At its core, Nine Pound Hammer attempts to describe a world which largely no longer exists. It’s as if the light from a miner’s lamp and the electricity generated by coal fired powerplants burned out in the last century, only to be replaced by solar arrays, gas fields and soulless nuclear power. But it should be remembered that the people of the coal were born, they labored, they died, and were laid to rest in this inverted land that they consider a monument to their lives. Each has inherited a kinship between themselves and the coal, and it is the one thing they still hold title to and receive royalty from, for most did not own the land or the coal itself; not in the same sense that it possessed them. The rough-timbered, corduroy shale is home ground to families of coal miners who hunt its dense forests, live beside blue-green spoil impoundments and fish the deep, cold, final cut lakes. Seen through their eyes, it is not an exhausted, ravaged land; it is consecrated ground; a dominion set apart from the rest of the world by the toil and struggle of generations of coal miners.
ASIN: B0D6YKSSFS
VSKU: BVV.B0D6YKSSFS.VG
Condition: Very Good
Author/Artist:Harding, Michael Vernon
Binding: Paperback