The Unquiet Earth by Denise Giardina
It is hard to think of a novel which gives a better feel for Appalachia in the 1970s than The Unquiet Earth. Denise Giardina's father's people came from Sicily to the Southern West Virginia coal camps in 1904. Her mother's people came from Pike County, Kentucky. Her mom, Leona, was a professional clown and sold her needlework at craft shows. Denise Giardina grew up in a McDowell County coal camp, Black Wolf. When she was 12, the company bulldozed the town and left. Her parents moved to Charleston. After graduating from West Virginia Wesleyan, she returned to Charleston and got involved in the Textbook Controversy. Despite being on the side of the "secularists" in this controversy, Giardina's next move was to go to seminary in Virginia. She returned to West Virginia and got her first novel, set in England, published in 1938 followed by Storming Heaven, a novel of the West Virginia mine wars of the 1920s, published in 1987. That novel established her as a prominent Appalachian novelist. This novel, The Unquiet Earth, demonstrated her talent beyond the historical novel. In 1971 her career stabilized with a position at West Virginia State University. She retired last year.
New York: W.W. Norton, 1992. 367 pages. Hardback in dust jacket.