During 1920 to 1921 in the hills of West Virginia, striking mine workers and company men faced off against one another in a forgotten war. Over one million bullets were fired, bombs were dropped, and men died in droves. This book singles out a handful of characters including Doc Moo a Lebanese-American, Frank Hugham, a black miner and Smilin Sid Hatfield, the town’s sheriff.

This was a well written and engaging book - I had a hard time putting it down! I was amazed that this battle was fought on American soil, but is not mentioned in the history books. I am also fascinated by the history of labor relations in the US and how workers struggled and fought for their rights. Overall, highly recommended! ( )

I’ve been a fan of Taylor Brown’s books ever since I read his first best-seller, Fallen, shortly after it was published in 2016. Even though I have read every book he has written since then (five in all) it has remained my favorite, until now. With las month’s release of , a fictionalized account of the largest armed uprising since the American Civil War, Brown has cemented himself as one of the leading authors of historical fiction to come out of the American South since Shelby Foote.

West Virginia’s Battle of Blair Mountain is also the largest and deadliest labor uprising in United States history, in which as many as 10 thousand striking coal miners fought against state police, local militias and private detectives hired by the mine owners. Although the miners held a vast advantage in numbers, the mines’ owners employed surplus gatling guns and airplanes which dropped bombs and poison gas on the strikers’ positions.* The strike finally ended when the president ordered U. S. Troops into the area to quell the insurrection. As many of the miners had served in the military during the Great War, they didn’t want to fire on the soldiers and most chose to surrender rather than do so. By its end, more than 100 people on both sides were killed, mostly miners.

Brown did an excellent job of breathing life into the actual historical characters such as Mary Mother Jones, UMW president Bill Blizzard, Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin, and Smilin’ Sid Hatfield (yes, one of those Hatfields), but his portrayal of his more-or-less fictional characters was magnificent. In most cases, he cobbled together bits and pieces of several actual participants into a single heroic entity such as that of ‘Big Frank Hugham’ who survived an attempted murder by Baldwin-Felts Detective and went on the become a leading figure in the battle. My favorite character, though, was Doctor Domit ‘Moo’ Muhanna, an immigrant doctor whose dedication to the Hippocratic Oath took him into the worst of the fighting to treat combatants on both sides. This character was based on Brown’s own grandfather, whose story bears striking similarities to his fictional counterpart.

Until Franklin Roosevelt signed the National Recovery Act in 1933, stories involving labor movements rarely had happy endings. Not only did the mine and factory owners control the money, the weapons and the politicians, they also controlled what the rest of us heard about such movements. Had we lived back then, we would not have been reading stories sympathetic to them or their cause. Brown portrays this brilliantly when he describes how censors handled a story that a reporter had risked his life to get.

“Cut this,” he said, setting the paper on the table, striking a sentence with his thumbnail, hard enough to leave a crease: Gaunt-faced women, barefooted and expressionless watched the troops pass. Some of them waved half-heartedly.
“No sob stuff for these Rednecks,” he said. He went on cutting and deleting, killing more lines, turning images into ghosts. People who once existed in the story were cut out. They disappeared between the lines, into the margins, like they’d never been.
Sparkes ground his teeth. He’d followed the American Expeditionary Force across Europe in the Great War, working on the bloody edge of the campaign, and never faced such a knife. The man before him seemed so sure of himself, so certain of his rightness. “No patriotic stuff from these people,” he said, cutting another line.
“You seem pretty cavalier about this, Major. You’re cutting awfully close with the United States Constitution right now, don’t you think?”
Bad Tony raised one eye at him. “All that time on the front lines, writing your stories, and you ain’t learned how it works yet. ’Tis the victor who writes the history—”
“And counts the dead. Yes, I know the quote.”

Bottom line: I can’t recommend this book highly enough. If you are thinking about reading this, stop thinking and start reading.

* The book’s characters claimed that this was the first time that American’s had subjected other Americans to aerial bombardment in the United States, but this is incorrect. Three months previously, bombs were dropped on the Greenwood District during the Tulsa Race Massacre in Oklahoma. It’s highly unlikely that anyone in West Virginia would have known that, though, so the author can be forgiven.

Quotations are cited from an advanced reading copy and may not be the same as appears in the final published edition. The review was based on an advanced reading copy obtained at no cost from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review. While this does take any ‘not worth what I paid for it’ statements out of my review, it otherwise has no impact on the content of my review.

FYI: On a 5-point scale I assign stars based on my assessment of what the book needs in the way of improvements:
*5 Stars – Nothing at all. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
*4 Stars – It could stand for a few tweaks here and there but it’s pretty good as it is.
*3 Stars – A solid C grade. Some serious rewriting would be needed in order for this book to be considered great or memorable.
*2 Stars – This book needs a lot of work. A good start would be to change the plot, the character development, the writing style and the ending.
*1 Star – The only thing that would improve this book is a good bonfire.

The West Virginia-Kentucky border has been home to volatile events from the Hatfields and McCoy Feud through coal Mining and the beginning of unions. This story is set during the later, with miners caught in the middle of a reckless job, violent union conflicts and poverty. Fraught with violence that rivals the Wild West, Rednecks delves into the lives of these characters and their plight for safe working and living conditions amidst racism and poverty-ism. Interesting and at times confounding, the plot moves through these events with heart wrenching detail and a need for triumph.
*I received an arc from the publisher through NetGalley for an honest review ( )

This is the story of the Battle on Blair Mountain. This is where an army of 10,000 coal miners battle mine owners, state militia, and the United States government in the largest labor uprising in American history. A powerful story of rebellion against oppression.

This tale is full of great historical detail and unique characters! I knew some of how the redneck term came about, but I did not know all. What these coal miners went through to get safe practices and fair wages is mind boggling.

I did find the tale a bit redundant and repetitive in places. This is a minor issue, I learned such a great deal!

Need a well researched novel about a tale most of us have forgotten about…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today!

I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review. ( )

If the term Rednecks get your dander up becuase of its modern meaning - - "a working-class white person, especially a politically reactionary one from a rural area" that is not the meaning that we find in this book. Interestingly, it came about when the Union workers tied red bandanas around their necks before entering this war.

If you like your American history real, raw, bloody, and very descriptive, then this might be the book for you. You may also enjoy this bit of history, especially if you come from or live in the rural Blue Ridge Mountains/Appalachia and want to see what it was like for some people over 100 years ago.

This book is about the bloody battle between the miners who wanted to join the union and King Coal, who wouldn't let them. It also shows us how so many ethnicities and people from different countries and cultures managed to band together to try and beat the 'enemy'.

It is a terrifying historical novel that sticks more with history in all of its blood, guts, and glory and a lot less with fiction (yes, a lot of this was fictionalized, but not much, I think).

Long descriptive passages and a compelling look into the life of “Doc Moo" Muhanna, a Lebanese-American doctor (inspired by the author’s own great-grandfather), and what he has to deal with not to take sides.

Well worth reading if you can really handle the horrors of what trying to break into a union really meant to our ancestors.

*ARC was supplied by the publisher St. Martin's Press/Macmillan, the author, and NetGalley. ( )