"Appalachian Passage" is based on the journal kept by Helen B. Hiscoe during the year that she, her physician husband, and their baby daughter spent in a West Virginia coal-mining camp. When he reported to Coal Mountain in June 1949 as the new company doctor, Bonta Hiscoe was young, idealistic, and unprepared for a practice in a remote "hollow" forty-five miles from the nearest hospital. With no trained help and substandard facilities, he was charged with the care of more than four hundred miners and their families.

Dr. Hiscoe found the work both challenging and exhausting and his wife...