"A girl's coming-of-age story that will long burn in your heart!"
The Hollow Ground
Genres: Literature and Fiction
Posted: January 12, 2016
It is 1961. Brigid's family is living at an aunt's house in Centrereach, smackdab in the coal mining region of Pennsylvania. Deep underground, a coal vein has caught fire and is raging. Flames burst out unexpectedly from the ground, basement floors feel warm on the feet, sinkholes rise and fall, and poisonous gases kill the unsuspecting.
Brigid's family has to relocate to her grandparents' house in Barrendale. There, her dad is definitely not the favoured son and her mother, Delores had sworn to never return. Now, cap in hand, life's circumstances have overtaken her mom's objections. Will the Howley curse continue to haunt them? How will they get on?
THE HOLLOW GROUND is an awesome debut coming-of-age novel by Natalie S. Harnett based on actual events and stories. Harnett's fictional town of Barrendale is inspired by Harnett's memories and research on circumstances and events in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, and it is easy to see why she won both the 2014 Appalachian Book of the Year as well as the 2015 John Gardner Fiction Book Award.
I found THE HOLLOW GROUND to be a totally engrossing read with lots of little mysteries as Brigid strives to make sense of life events and to understand what pleases and upsets her Irish American family members. Despite the family's poverty and bitter fights, Brigid still finds some degree of small joys and normalcy due to her youth and innocence. She is the shining star in this dark tale of the dysfunction, but will her love for them be enough?
THE HOLLOW GROUND is filled with diverse characters who all have their own issues and problems. Yet, they all come vividly and realistically to life. One of Harnett's many talents as a writer is how well she captures the dialogue between the characters and uses their interactions with each other to layer in the oppressiveness of the environment in which they continue to live and the slowness of government to do anything meaningful to help with these horrific environmental circumstances, which continue to this day.
Despite the despair and darkness, Harnett is sure to keep you fascinated with how people cope with their lives, how they deal with each other, and how Brigid grows in her understanding of the people around her. Like me, you will want to keep turning the pages to find out if Grandma's "big idea" will work. THE HOLLOW GROUND is sure to become a classic that you will definitely not want to miss! Enjoy!
Book Summary
Winner of the John Gardner Fiction Book Award!
We walk on fire or air, so Daddy liked to say. Basement floors too hot to touch. Steaming green lawns in the dead of winter. Sinkholes, quick and sudden, plunging open at your feet.
The underground mine fires ravaging Pennsylvania coal country have forced eleven-year-old Brigid Howley and her family to seek refuge with her estranged grandparents, the formidable Gram and the black lung stricken Gramp. Tragedy is no stranger to the Howleys, a proud Irish-American clan who takes strange pleasure in the "curse" laid upon them generations earlier by a priest who ran afoul of the Molly Maguires. The weight of this legacy rests heavily on a new generation, when Brigid, already struggling to keep her family together, makes a grisly discovery in a long-abandoned bootleg mine shaft. In the aftermath, decades-old secrets threaten to prove just as dangerous to the Howleys as the burning, hollow ground beneath their feet.
Inspired by real-life events in Centralia and Carbondale, where devastating coal mine fires irrevocably changed the lives of residents, THE HOLLOW GROUND is an extraordinary debut with an atmospheric, voice-driven narrative and an indelible sense of place. Lovers of literary fiction will find in Harnett's young, determined protagonist a character as heartbreakingly captivating as any in contemporary literature.
Read an Excerpt
St. Martin's Griffin
September 1, 2015
On Sale: August 25, 2015
Featuring: Brigid Howley
336 pages
ISBN: 1250067758
EAN: 9781250067753
Kindle: B00GETG0FK
Paperback / e-Book (reprint)