The Well and the Mine

Categories: Staff Picks , Fiction

If you don't mind standing in line a bit, here's a book worth standing in line for, Gin Phillips' debut novel The Well and the Mine.

This lovely short novel takes place during the Depression in the mountains of Alabama.  Tess, the younger daughter of a coal miner, is sitting on the back porch of her family’s cabin, where she often goes to be alone.  A woman she does not know walks up to the porch, takes the lid off the well, and drops her baby in.  Then she disappears into the night.

The family at first doesn’t believe Tess’s story, but it turns out tragically to be true.  Tess starts to suffer from nightmares.  For the whole family, this act seems to undercut the solidity of what had seemed to be a good life.

The novel, which is told by turn from each family member's point of view, quietly takes them through this period of frightening uncertainty.

Albert, Tess's father, does backbreaking, dangerous work in the mines, but he has the respect of his coworkers and has always dealt with them fairly, black or white.  Now he is beginning to wonder whether that was quite as fair as he had thought.

Leta, his wife, holds her family together, never stopping to rest as she cooks, cans, cleans, making sure they never feel the hardship that so many families around them face.  An accident shows her how fragile the charmed circle she draws around them really is.

Virgie, Tess's sister, is blossoming into a beauty, and knows that will change her life.  But the thought that a woman could kill her baby frightens her with what her future could be.

Gradually, as they all come to understand what really happened that night, the family regroups. 

This is a lovely, lovely book, a paean to a time and place long gone and to a sense of home and family that is rooted in tradition and continuity.  It doesn’t seem too sentimental, particularly as the flash-forward parts of the narration show how the characters’ lives are bound to change.  Readers who enjoy richly emotional fiction, historical fiction with a strong sense of period, regional fiction, and women’s fiction will all find this a rewarding read.