Those That Mattered

Returning home from college to her West Virginia, coal-mining roots, Portia Crowe escapes a bad marriage and follows in her family's footsteps to become one of the first female members of the United Mine Workers

Angle's first novel, about a young woman's coming of age in a small West Virginia coal-mining town, resonates with authentic detail and narrative passion, despite some flaws. The apparently autobiographical story follows one Portia Crowe through childhood, adolescence, marriage and motherhood in a harsh and joyless world. The menfolk of Cogan's Bluff, including Portia's grandfather, father and brother, spend their lives working in the mines. When Portia finds herself divorced and struggling in a town with limited opportunities, she becomes one of the first women to follow the men underground (as the author herself did, in 1975). Angle's observations about mining's crushing effect on bodies and spirits are trenchant and unforgettable; unfortunately, she fails to explore adequately the complex feelings about home and family that keep Portia in Cogan's Bluff, despite a college education that widens her opportunities. The book's greatest strength is a unique narrative voice that renders a vanishing way of life in perfect pitch. Yet, probably because of its autobiographical inspiration, the story is essentially formless, adding up to what's more an amalgam of episodes than a solid plot. Still, this serves as an interesting piece of social realism, a highly personal testament to survival in harsh circumstances .
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This autobiographical debut novel about coal mining in Appalachia is almost hypnotic in its intensity, drama, and stark realism. Portia Crowe immerses herself in books and goes her own way, unimpressed by the drab female lives she sees around her in a West Virginia mining town. She becomes the first of her family to study in college but, when she returns home, finds her career options limited to teaching in the local high school. Twelve years later, Portia has a colorless marriage to a preacher, a home ruled by her possessive mother-in-law, and a son who prefers his indulgent grandmother to her. Her beloved father has died in a mining accident. When her grandfather succumbs to lung disease, grief and renewed independence lead Portia to leave her husband. Like all her family, she is both drawn to and repelled by the skilled, risky work of the mines. But the highest-paying, most dangerous career in town is dominated by men who are openly contemptuous of women. When she joins their ranks, she receives a breathtakingly relentless onslaught of abuse. Against a constant backdrop of sexual slurs, foremen give Portia the most physically demanding assignments; she toughs it out. The wild card, however, is the attraction between Portia and her boss, Steve Zanzucki. Reasoning that Portia's hazing could not get worse, they have an affair, and Portia becomes pregnant. Steve abandons her, and the foremen respond with severe workloads that nearly cause a miscarriage. Portia takes a respite from the mines, recovers her health, and gives birth to a son. But when she returns to mining, she suffers an accident that leaves her right arm useless. As the men try frantically to rescue her, they finally grant her their long-withheld caring and respect. A hard-edged tale of mining conditions and, especially, of the dearly bought success of one courageous woman. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Portia Crowe's early memories are of Whetzel's Tavern, where her father hung out nightly with his mine buddies exchanging stories, damning bosses, and arguing union tactics. Following college, an unhappy teaching career, and a failed marriage, Portia returns to her roots. One of the first women to go underground when mining becomes a career option for women, she feels at home with her decision and her choice of careers, but neither the other miners nor the bosses share her enthusiasm. The worst jobs, the foulest language, the crudest jokes become hers to endure. Portia is a tough woman with a self-imposed tough job to do. Those That Mattered is an equally tough book, laying bare the worst of human nature. That it is based on the author's life only increases the poignancy. This is a story that needs to be told; however, its emotionally charged themes will cause both women and men to read it in anger and complete it with a sigh. Recommended for large fiction collections.
Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. at Carbondale Lib.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.