Strange as This Weather Has Been: A Novel [Paperback]

Ann Pancake (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 28, 2007

Set in present day West Virginia, Ann Pancake’s debut novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been, tells the story of a coal mining family—a couple and their four children—living through the latest mining boom and dealing with the mountaintop removal and strip mining that is ruining what is left of their mountain life. As the mine turns the mountains to slag and wastewater, workers struggle with layoffs and children find adventure in the blasted moonscape craters.

Strange As This Weather Has Been follows several members of the family, with a particular focus on fifteen-year-old Bant and her mother, Lace. Working at a “scab” motel, Bant becomes involved with a young miner while her mother contemplates joining the fight against the mining companies. As domestic conflicts escalate at home, the children are pushed more and more outside among junk from the floods and felled trees in the hollows—the only nature they have ever known. But Bant has other memories and is as curious and strong-willed as her mother, and ultimately comes to discover the very real threat of destruction that looms as much in the landscape as it does at home.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A hard-living Appalachian family weathers a contemporary coal boom in the debut from West Virginia native Pancake. Soon after their first meeting in the 1980s, college freshman Lace See and 15-year-old local boy James Makepeace Turrell (Jimmy Make) conceive their first child. Nearly 20 years later, Lace is uneasily settled as a mother to Jimmy's four children as a flurry of strip mining and clear cutting make the mountains she has known since childhood unrecognizable. One summer right after a strip-mining induced flood, things come to a head. Lace's environmental activism ramps up; daughter Bant, working at a local motel, discovers her allegiance to the mountains and her sexuality; each of Lace and Jimmy's three sons (Corey, Jimmy and Dane) is touched in turn by the collapsing economy and environment. Lush descriptions of the landscape are matched with a hurtling stream-of-consciousness narration to great effect: one doubts neither the characters' voices nor their places in a very complex poverty. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* With her beloved West Virginia hollows and valleys under constant onslaught by a savage coal-mining industry whose raping of the land threatens her home with devastating floods, Lace Ricker finds herself battling callous forces both without and within her own family. As thunderous blasts weaken their home's foundation and poisoned wastewater infiltrates their well, Lace and her daughter, Bant, secretly become more determined to find a way to stop the mines, while Lace's husband pragmatically refuses to fight the union bosses, and her sons tentatively, then calamitously, accept the challenges and adventure of life lived in the shadow of imminent danger. By tracing the devastating impact of coal mining through the eyes of Lace and her four children, Pancake's powerful debut novel evinces a poetic pathos and authentic respect for the land and the people who love it. To comprehend the egregious and tragic environmental damage mountaintop-removal coal mining has wrought on the once pristine vistas of Appalachia, one should read any one of many excellent exposés. To understand the human toll such destruction exacts, one must turn to fiction, for novels such as Pancake's reflect deeper, timeless truths. Haggas, Carol

Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: Shoemaker & Hoard; First Edition edition (September 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159376166X
• ISBN-13: 978-1593761660
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #103,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A novel that is remembered long after the book is finished, October 10, 2007

By 

Cara G (portland oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Strange as This Weather Has Been: A Novel (Paperback)

This is a delicately told story of a working class family and their very real struggle between making a living and the destruction of the land they love. This novel stirred me on so many levels: the personal stories of working class people, the stories of how families cope, the environmental and economic conflicts related to the practice of mountain top removal. Long after I finished reading this book, I still find myself thinking about aspects of the novel. Pancake's prose is honest, spare, and unsentimental. I recommend this book.

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Important Novel for West Virginia and Our American Heritage, October 11, 2007

By 

A. Stagg (Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Strange as This Weather Has Been: A Novel (Paperback)

In The Jungle: The Uncensored Original Edition, Upton Sinclair portrayed the horrors of the meat processing industry; readers were shocked and indignant. Reforms soon followed. One can only hope that Pancake's current book has an equal impact on her readers. Her new novel reminds us that West Virginia has a long history of wealthy industry moguls stripping the state of its natural resources and leaving the population with little to show for their hard work. In the early 20th Century, the people of Southern West Virginia bravely stood up for their rights during the Coal Mine Wars. A good expose for that history can be found in the movie, Matewan.

Ann Pancake's book fast forwards to the beginning of the 21st Century where West Virginians are again facing grave threats to their heritage, their lands, and their lives. Pancake tells us in her book how the land AND the people are used up and discarded. Mountain-top Removal mining is destroying one of America's greatest natural assets for short-term gain by a few individuals. The land left behind is ruined and sometimes toxic. The lives of the people who live there are often ruined as well. The mountains are leveled. The valleys, the hollows, and the streams are filled with debris and lost. People who have lived on the land for generations are displaced with no home to re-visit; their homes and their beloved mountains are gone. As Americans we are all diminished.

To be clear, this is NOT just an expose on Mountain Top Removal Mining. As a novel it is quite enjoyable and well-crafted. Aside from the mining subtext, she tells a very compelling human story about love, relationships, and independence. As you might expect, it is not a happy story. But, Pancake captures the essence of West Virginians as few have managed to do. She plays with language related to feeling in a way that brings the reader quite close to the people she is portraying. Character development is excellent. Her chapters cycle through the points-of-view of each of her characters. It is a beautifully told story. Authors writing about West Virginia often try very hard to write in dialect. Pancake to her great credit does not. As in her earlier work, Given Ground (Bakeless Prize), the grammar spoken by her characters is not always perfect, but it does not distract from the story as is often the case in the work of others. Her book is far more authentic. She portrays the people of Southern West Virginia with the dignity and respect they deserve.

Pancake tells the story of West Virginians, their heritage, and the spiritual bond they have to the land. But, underlying this is the feeling that the land and the mountains are the heritage of every American and every human being. Hopefully, books like this will spur change and not be a chronicle for future generations of things being lost that can never be recovered. I Highly Recommend This Book!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A story of the true cost of coal, July 20, 2008

By 

Sarah F. Grant "Sarah from Kentucky" (Louisville, KY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Strange as This Weather Has Been: A Novel (Paperback)

This novel relays in story form lives lived in the hollars below a form of coal "mining" called by many Mountain Top Removal. What is happening in these communities is real. The cost on lives, land, and streams is high. Pancake's Strange as This Weather Has Been: A Novel helps bring this home for all of us.