This treasure would pass, along with Dad, if I didn’t do something to preserve it. And at the same time, one thought was always with me . . .
. . . I knew I wanted to tell the WHOLE story. I wanted to share the old Black Mountain miner’s experience in its full measure.
Or better yet . . . have DAD tell it . . . through his eyes and in his own words, as he lived it.
And that’s precisely what we did. He shared it all – the joy and sadness, success and failure, hardship and bounty – and I recorded it just as he spoke it.
My job then was to undertake several years of extensive research so I could fill in the historical context around the stories . . . but the stories themselves are his, written just as he spoke them.
At the outset I wanted Memory of a Miner to preserve Dad’s story, and to serve as a pipeline for his telling of it.
And I soon discovered that I was telling not only my dad’s tale and documenting his mining journey – but also in some small way all miners of the day.
I hope I’ve accomplished that mission well, for they certainly deserve it.
So whether you have mining in your roots or not, if you enjoy a real life action-adventure set in the mid 1900s that showcases both the bad times and the good, I’m hoping you’ll love reading Memory of a Miner.