The stories told in Growing up in Coal Country are from coal-mining towns in northeastern Pennsylvania in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some towns were "patch villages," or company towns built up around a mine, and others, such as Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, were "free" towns. The driving economic and political force in all these towns was the mine.

Mining towns were often filthy from coal dust and unsanitary sewer and water systems, and unsafe owing to cave-ins underground in the mine shafts. Most activities revolved around the mine, and virtually every house and institution was owned by the mining company—the stores, the police, the churches, and even the schools.

Town residents, with names like O'Boyle, Wentovich, and Santarelli, were divided by class and ethnic group. The ethnic neighborhoods allowed immigrant families to continue speaking their native language and observing family traditions, most of which...