Coal Run [Hardcover]

Tawni O'Dell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2005

With her eagerly awaited second novel, Tawni O'Dell takes readers back to the coal-mining country of western Pennsylvania. Set in a town ravaged and haunted by a mine explosion that took the lives of 96 men, Coal Run explores the life of local deputy and erstwhile football legend, "The Great Ivan Z.," as he prepares for a former teammate's imminent release from prison. As the week unfolds and Ivan struggles to confront his demons, he reveals himself to be a man whose conscience is burdened by a long-held and shocking secret.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A poignant tale of a once-proud Pennsylvania coal town destroyed by a mining disaster, Tawni O'Dell's second novel, Coal Run, follows its wounded inhabitants as they try to come to terms with what is gone and what remains. "The Great Ivan Z"--Ivan Zoschenko--is a mythical football hero who, after being injured on the eve of a promising professional career, heads for Florida (and the bottom of the bottle) for a decade before limping back to Coal Run and getting a job as deputy sheriff. The novel spans a week's time, but recollections and suppositions of the characters add depth; the book's an engrossing adventure in self-redemption and acceptance.

Multiple plot lines abound: Ivan keenly awaits the release from prison of his teammate, Reese Raynor, who beat his wife into a coma and whom Ivan visits regularly in the hospital; Reese's brother and his family struggle with many kids, little money and fewer prospects; Ivan's boyhood hero, Val, a Vietnam veteran who likewise spent years elsewhere, returns with eyes for Ivan's sister, a waitress, former beauty queen, and single mom. And, of course, there's a love interest. Stood up by her date, Ivan contemplates: "What could possibly be more important than sitting across a table from this woman and watching her put things in her mouth? I wonder as I take a seat." Despite somewhat predictable plot elements, O'Dell has the benefit of so many different story lines and characters to choose from that the novel is well-paced and allows her powers of observation to shine. For example, Ivan notes: "I need a drink. I'm not embarrassed or apologetic about the craving. Needing a drink isn't any worse than needing to collect Beanie Babies. I'd rather be a drunk than a moron."

Coal Run is a pitch-perfect story of a town's rediscovery that the best thing about it is its people and their ability to survive and retain a sense of pride, even after its identity and many lives were lost. --Michael Ferch --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

O'Dell (Back Roads) explores the dynamics of a tiny Pennsylvania coal-mining town in her probing, heartbreaking second novel, which centers on the fortunes of former college football hero Ivan Zoschenko. The novel literally opens with a bang in a flashback that recalls the tragic underground explosion that took the life of Zoschenko's father and killed 96 other men from Coal Run. Some 15 years later, just after Zoschenko is drafted by the Chicago Bears, his knee is crushed in an accident in the same mines. His subsequent fall from grace is long and hard; he moves to Florida, hits the bars and works as an exterminator. He returns home only when he hears that Reese Raynor, a former schoolmate who beat his wife, Crystal, into a coma, is being released from prison. Despite his drinking problem, Zoschenko is hired as a deputy by the local sheriff, getting back in touch with his gorgeous sister, a single mom and career waitress; his boyhood hero, now a reclusive Vietnam vet; Reese's troubled twin brother, Jesse; and Crystal, who is still comatose and reminds Zoschenko of a shameful incident in his past. That past is linked to Reese Raynor's, and the novel builds to the inevitable brutal collision of the two men. O'Dell's portrait of Zoschenko is deep and penetrating, but even more moving is her portrayal of the coal-town community. Ravaged by disaster and callous corporate treatment, the citizens of Coal Run still can't imagine any other life. As Zoschenko puts it, "Long before [the mine] became the site of so much death, it had been a source of life for all of us. For me it was the closest thing I had to God." Though it occasionally flirts with sentimentality, this is a fierce, sharply drawn and richly sympathetic tribute to working-class America.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Perfection Learning (June 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0756957176
• ISBN-13: 978-0756957179
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,027,300 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "You always belong where you're from", June 22, 2004

By 

M. J Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Coal Run (Hardcover)

Tawni O'Dell's lyrical, ambitious and tension-filled novel seems to emerge and explode onto the page. The story is rendered in such a tightly disciplined prose that the reader will probably be left overwhelmed by the strength of the author's vision. Ivan Zoschenko "the Great Ivan Z" is an aging, former football hero and drifter who has lost his father in a mine explosion that shattered the town of Coal Run thirty years ago. Now living in Florida he is sent a newspaper article telling him that an old teammate, Reese Rayner is about to be released from prison after fifteen years for murder and is heading back to the town. Reese had violently and brutally mutilated his wife, who was so badly battered that she remains hooked up to life support in a convalescent home run by Ivan's compassionate and kindly mother. Ivan returns to Coal Run a weather-beaten man intent on revenge - a man who remains bitter, angry, and with a penchant for wayward drinking. He scrapes out a living working as a local deputy, and sleeps either in his truck or on the sofa at his sister, Jolene's house. The story takes place over one week, from Sunday to Friday, as Ivan, conflicted with pent-up and astringent fury, begins to settle old scores, face the mistakes he made in his careless youth, and reconnect with the people he's either treated badly or ignored.

Packed into this bitterly powerful novel, is a dazzling array of well-chiseled, colorful characters: Ivan's former teenage idol Val Claypool, hangs around the town, and reminisces with a sense of palpable regret his time in the Vietnam War, where he lost his friends and his leg. The climate of mutual need is blended with a deep-seated contempt in the Raynor family, where Jeff Rayner, unemployed, desperate, and unable to provide for his wife, Bobbie and their children, is driven to the brink of fury and despair. The spent anger, the family dysfunction, the desperation, and the sense of disappointed lives going nowhere permeate this hard-edged story. Coal Run is not just a searing portrait of one man's chronicle of personal tragedy, but also a bitterly acute commentary on one community's disaffected and disparate inhabitants.

The book is strongest when it sticks to the poetic descriptions of and the destruction and the sense of hopelessness of Coal Run and the surrounding areas. The explosion in "Gertie," the local mine, left a town visibly on fire, and an entire community gone: houses raised, buckled sidewalks and driveways leading to nowhere and nothing, lawn ornaments and bicycles left behind in weed-choked yards. The coal that had once provided the town with life has turned to poison beneath it and caused its death. Questions of regret, disappointment, love, loss and the fragility of human life are woven together as Ivan tries to understand how he can dislike a town he still loves, how he can envy a way of life he doesn't necessarily want to have, and how he needed to leave his home in order to realize that it actually is his home.

Coal Run is richly and tautly rendered, and O'Dell has the shear narrative skill to present a story that is both complex and multi-layered. Her prose is meticulously whittled and surefooted and her powers of description are exacting and uncompromising - for one terrible instant Ivan feels he's been manipulated and pitted against the town for reasons he just doesn't understand and by forces beyond his control. Coal Run is narrated in a generous, patient, and intelligent voice, and the author almost presents the subject matter from the perspective of an insider, clear eyed and without sentimentality. This is a fine novel, about a man and a community who feels they have lost everything, and consequently, stands empty handed. Redemption and deliverance do come to Ivan and the townspeople of Coal Run, but only after much soul-searching, hurting, and pain. Mike Leonard June 04

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really enjoyed this...., March 4, 2005

By 

M. Kruft "BookClubBetty" (Baltimore, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Coal Run (Hardcover)

Very well written, very thought-provoking. Interesting that it's written by a woman but the narrator character is a tough guy. Recommend this highly.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging, Poignant, Heroic -- This is Simply a Great Book, July 25, 2004

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coal Run (Hardcover)

It may not be true that you can never go home again. Literature, as in life, is full of homecomings. What is always interesting is a person's motivation for returning home after a long absence, especially the motivation of a person who has deliberately distanced themselves from their hometown and past. What drove them away in the first place and what draws them back, and why now? What and where is home, really? These are questions explored in Tawni O'Dell's wonderful new novel, COAL RUN.

COAL RUN is the story of a small mining town, its inhabitants, its pride and shame, its tragic past and its hope for the future, all exemplified by the narrator, Ivan Zoschenko. Ivan, the town's most famous export, has returned home many years after leaving to play college and professional football. After a career-ending injury he moved to Florida hoping to leave his home and memories behind him. Ivan was one of the many residents who lost loved ones in a mining accident in 1967. But it wasn't really the loss of his father and other relatives that drove him away. Ivan carries a great and dark secret, and his return is partially inspired by the release from prison of Reese Raynor, a former teammate.

Ivan is not the only one coming home; his childhood hero, Val Claypool, has returned as well. As Ivan spends a week in the western Pennsylvanian town he thought he'd never live in again, he is confronted by all the hurt in his entire past and by the damage he feels he must inflict on another.

Why does Ivan want to kill Reese? Why has Val returned? What is Ivan's connection to the woman lying in a coma in a local nursing home? And who else knows Ivan's secret? COAL RUN is not a mystery, but as Ivan's story unfolds, these questions are answered and O'Dell gives the reader a vivid portrait of a small and wounded town, and a man struggling with his past and his future.

All of O'Dell's characters are interesting, intriguing and real. Ivan is a classic wounded hero, and the emotional journey he takes in the course of the novel is immensely readable. There are many sympathetic characters in COAL RUN, including Ivan's beautiful and independent sister, Jolene, her sons, his mother, the local doctor and the ghost of Ivan's father, who looms large throughout.

The coming home story is a genre unto itself. And O'Dell is perfect in her telling of this tale of redemption, family, regret, hope and home. She never resorts to the simple quirkiness of many "small town" tales or the morose and sappy stories of miners, although this is a novel set in a small mining town. Instead, COAL RUN is original and filled with wonderful humanity. Ivan Zoschenko is a likeable, though flawed protagonist. O'Dell has created a world that is touchingly real and that challenges the characters to sort out life's complexities and to face heartbreak and pain without giving up hope.

So many positive adjectives apply to COAL RUN: engaging, poignant, heroic. This is simply a great book.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman