Sue Pickett was a coal miner's daughter who became a coal miner's wife and witnessed and lived through the turbulent years of the Great Depression and the sometimes violent struggles between labor unions and coal mine bosses throughout the Appalachian South--especially her native Alabama. The dramatic central episode in her account is a March 1934 standoff between striking miners and the mine owners. Pickett's story is peopled with memorable characters, including her irrepressible husband David and an almost Biblical cast of other family members; a roaring, fire-belching automobile nicknamed...

Two central Alabama counties, Hale and Tuscaloosa, provide the setting for Distant Son, the absorbing story of a young boy struggling, during the forties and fifties, to define himself in a world of poverty and deprivation.
Norman McMillan was the eighth of ten children. His forceful mother Lucille was greatly ambitious for her children, and his feckless father Albert never knew how to capitalize on his advantages. During much of young McMillan s first eighteen years, his family sharecropped, living in a series of rough, unpainted houses and struggling to claw out a meager living...

Born during the Great Depression, Mike Mahan was in many ways a very lucky boy. His parents, a barber and a beautician, owned their own shop and home, always providing ample food, clothing, and warmth. No Hill Too High for a Stepper is not, then, the usual story of economic or family struggle, but rather a celebration of life in Montevallo, Alabama, during the thirties, forties, and fifties. It paints excellent portraits of unusually supportive parents as well as of other family members and townspeople, creating a detailed sense of small-town life during this period. At the heart of this book...