Yount, John

New York. 1980. Richard Marek Publisher. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Slightly Worn Dustjacket. 0399900616. 287 pages. hardcover. Jacket design & painting by Mary Mietzelfeld . keywords: Literature America . FROM THE PUBLISHER - The world of HARDCASTLE is so vivid and tactile and the characters are so compellingly human and alive that this story will haunt the reader's memory with the power of a lived experience. William Music, who tries to retreat from big city hard times only to find in rural America a situation more desperate and far more binding than the one he's fled; Ella Bone, who is fated to love every person who blunders into her path; Regus Bone, whose sheer strength and humor allow him to face any contingency; Merlee Taylor, who means to sustain herself with nothing more than spite: these four unforgettable characters occupy the heart of John Yount's extraordinary new novel. HARDCASTLE is a document of stunning truth. It is a spare, lyrical novel of the Great Depression and a misbegotten communist conspiracy to use the coal miner against the system that once enslaved him. But most of all HARDCASTLE charts the topography of the human spirit and captures, in the process, a specific American type, the Appalachian coal miner who endured then, and endures still, in the coal fields of Kentucky and West Virginia. inventory #7384 ISBN: 0399900616.