TO THE BRIGHT AND SHINING SUN

This is an updated down home tale that is as messy as the mines where its characters suffer. Perry Woodson Hatfield James aims to live up to his name after his pappy is done in by company men during a union strike. But this is half way through a novel that has Perry, at first, roughing it in the Job Corps. After his father's death Perry returns to the Kentucky minefields seeking revenge. He gets drunk, brawls with two locals, runs out of money and helplessly watches three of his brothers and sisters hauled away by the Welfare people. He spends a stint in the mines before he gets laid off and then, just when he's down to his last bottle of moonshine, he hears that they've caught up with the men that killed his father. Perry is brought in to finish them off but at the last minute he can't do it and ends up saving their lives. An act that doesn't set too well with the miners and Perry has to hightail it out of town. . . . One wishes he had done so earlier.