Storming Heaven

Rating:
Summary: Vividly captures Appalachian culture and the human spirit
Review: After reading Storming Heaven a vivid image came to my mind. I thought,
"When heaven storms, the rain beats down on us in torrents. It flushes our filth; it rinses the dust trapped in the crevices of our soul."

Writing about a subject such as the coal miners and the union, Denise Giardina was able to capture and retain my attention. She took the subject and interwove it with rich characters. I admire the way that Denise Giardina used language to capture the highlights of a baseball game. That's not an easy task to achieve on paper.

Denise Giardina was able to capture the nature of the human spirit in her novel. I knew that she had done this when I found myself relating to the characters and their trials and tribulations. I have had a Rondal. I tend to think most of us have. It is that person you love that doesn't quite love you back and that makes you love them even more. I have had an Albion. I tend to think most of us have. It's that person that loves you and you don't quite love them back and that makes them love you even more.

Then you grow older and your heart is tired of hurting. You don't want to be alone. You settle and you take the comfort of selecting a partner that is loyal and a friend, someone that doesn't trouble you. You settle for an Albion. You usually grow old with your Albion and think of your Rondal when the sun shines or the wind blows, but then you think about how lucky you are to have Albion when you're sick or your day is long.
But, Denise Giardina placed interesting twists and surprises in her novel.

The story has elements of sadness, but it brought no tears to my eyes. I felt bad for C.J. and his loss. I felt sorry for Rosa with her broken language and life. I felt sorry for Carrie and her heartache; I felt sorry for Miles with his longing for something more. I sympathized with the pain of being a mother that remembers nursing something that is now a gray corpse. Every character had a loss, an emptiness, a vulnerability, a strength and so forth. They were human.

I like the images of the last paragraph at the end of the book, but I feel disappointed in the ending. I am not sure I felt that she did the rest of the book justice. I thought that it was ironic that at the end when the baby has the last name "Freeman." Men are never free.

Even with death, Giardina insinuates that there is no rest. Remembrance is so powerful; it follows us to the grave and beyond. Ghosts roam not to forgive but to forget. They roam in vain.

Rating:
Summary: WV History Come to Life
Review: As luck would have it, the author of this fantastic tale teaches at my college. That's right, I get to experience (and even be taught by) her any time I feel like sneaking by her room or dishing out money to be a student. BS aside, it's a good book--buy and read it, or forever be lesser than you could be.

Rating:
Summary: Spellbinding, riveting
Review: Hailing from the coal regions of Northeastern Pennsylvania, when I learned of this title, I quickly ordered a copy and read it within a day and a half. I could not put it down, and, in fact, kept returning to passages because Giardina's prose is brilliant. The characters are so alive that I was actually upset to end the book and lose Carrie Bishop as a friend. Being a writer, I am in awe of Giardina. In fact, off I go to read the other Giardina book I ordered, "The Unquiet Earth." Anyone from coal country, be it NE PA's anthracite field or coal country in other locations, will readily identify with this story for its historical worth. Reading it is like listening to tales as told by our great-grandparents who worked in the damp,dark underground and their families, who toiled above.

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Summary: A Richness Only Found in West Virginia
Review: I am grateful for writers like Denise Giardina, who has added immeasurably to my understanding of the coal-mine town, its company stores, and the many brutal attempts to discourage unionization. These are the people who put themselves on the line for the rest of us, we who in later generations have come to dismiss the incredible hardships involved in starting unions that would stand behind the common laborer who could not be heard. Whole families were engaged in this huge American struggle for decent hours and a living wage, and many were killed in the process. This book is full of the simple people who did their jobs well and didn't ask for much in return. They certainly didn't ask for the state militia to be mustered to shut them up. It is even more outrageous that the United States Government would rain bombs and poison gas upon its own citizens in West Virginia in one of the most shameful events in recent American history. My teachers never told me any of this in school, but they did say to remember that history always repeats itself.

Rating:
Summary: Grreat storyteller
Review: I was absolutely intrigued by a recent write-up in the New Orleans newpaper about Denise Giardina. She grew up Methodist, studied for the Episcopal priesthood and was invited to preach at a local Baptist church. Plus she is currently a "long-shot" candidate for West Virginia Governor running against coal interests. Unfortunately I missed her talk, but I did read "Storming Heaven" and found it to be one of those books that stays with you: ordinary characters who find themselves in tough circumstances. It was so good that I read it in two sittings.

It did remind me of Barbara Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible" in two ways: an ensemble cast with the story being told from multiple points-of-view over time, and as a story about institutions taken to excess (religion in PB and capitalism in SH). However, religion does play a role in "Storming Heaven", but it wasn't preachy. One of the characters was a "Hardshell" Baptist preacher, a likeable, positive character unlike the preacher in "Poisonwood."

Giardina's voice might be called liberal because she is clearly on the side of the union and workers with plenty of heartbreaking examples of abuse from the early coal companies. But abuse of the miners and their families also comes from the U.S. government, which interestingly brings to mind the recent events in Waco, Texas, where our government also besieged and attacked innocent citizens.

Overall, this is a wonderful, well-written book. Gardina is a great storyteller. Read it.

Rating:
Summary: WV History Come to Life
Review: The version of West Virginia history I learned in school as a child never matched the history I learned perched on my daddy's knee. Giardina tells the story of her not-so-distant ancestors, my ancestors, giving a voice to people the rest of America either maligned or ignored for so many decades. She captures the dialect, the manners, and the spirit of these people, telling their story in a way only someone who loves them fiercely could ever manage. Giardina is one of the people who have proven to me that Appalachia is worth writing about, after all.

Rating:
Summary: A Must-Read
Review: This book tells a story, based on actual events, that is little known to those outside of the Appalachian coalfield area. It is told through the eyes of four characters, and is both moving and chilling. The South was built on the backs of slaves, the railroad on the backs of Chinese and other immigrants, but many Americans are unaware that our industrial progress was fueled by the coal out of West Virginia and Kentucky, mined by "mountain folk" who were brutalized by our own government, as well as the coal operators who kept them in abject poverty. A tremendous book.