Tania's Book Review

The Well and the Mine
by Gin Phillips

This charming piece of southern literature was a fast read, and hard to put down. It takes place in 1930s Alabama, when coal miners made $6 a week, it was risky for a white man and black man to have dinner together, and women who ventured into the career world were required to quit their jobs if they got married.

The book, narrated by all five members of the Moore family, paints a picture of family life in a small coal-mining town. The novel is centered around a mystery - it opens with a woman tossing a baby into a well. Despite how horrible that sounds, it’s not a morbid tale. Rather, the incident helps shed light on the fact that there’s often more to a story than we may initially realize. And the incident helps the characters grow, as they come to terms with certain stereotypes about race and economic status.

Too often when books offer a historical perspective the story gets bogged down in too much detail. But in “The Well and the Mine,” the amount of details - whether describing how the mother did laundry in a large wash pot over a burning fire, or the father’s daily labors in a dangerous coal mine - help transport the reader back to an era where life was either much harder or much easier than it is today (depending on your perspective).

The beauty of this novel is that you’re immediately connected to the characters, and feel like they’re real people. I felt like I was reading a memoir rather than a work of fiction. The only negative thing I have to say about this book is that it ended too quickly.

The verdict: 5 out of 5 stars