Coal Miners' Wives: Portraits of Endurance
Statistics reported in this well-researched study reveal the grim reality of daily life for coal-mining families in Appalachia. Between 1897 and 1939, nearly every day a West Virginia mining family lost a member to the mines (346 deaths per year), while dozens of men suffered injuries daily. Despite modern safety procedures and technological advances that lowered that astounding death rate to an average 22 deaths per year between 1981 and 1986, mining is still dangerous work, with cave-ins, explosions and toxic gases ever-present hazards. To find out how families deal with the stresses and strains of constant danger, Giesen, human development professor at St. Mary's college in Maryland, interviewed 18 coal miners' wives, ranging in age from late teens to the early 80s. Eschewing melodramatic anecdotes and making good use of face-to-face conversations, the author balances the interviewees' recollections of personal experiences with her own insights into the social and economic pressures of the coal-mining industry. In their own words, the women relate their domestic concerns and how they try to shield their husbands from household problems. They describe their fears of job hazards and tell how they cope with stress of strikes, layoffs, mine closings and companies that place more emphasis on profit than on safety. In this study, Giesen provides an absorbing portrait of the hard impact of one industry on real women's lives.Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.