The Path Was Steep: A Memoir of Appalachian Coal Camps During the Great Depression

Sue Pickett was a coal miner's daughter who became a coal miner's wife. She witnessed the turbulent years of the Great Depression and the sometimes-violent struggles between labor unions and coal mine bosses throughout the Appalachian South-especially in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Mrs. Pickett's native Alabama.
Her story is peopled with memorable characters-an almost Biblical cast of family members, which includes her irrepressible husband David; the dangerous and feared coal-company enforcer Mike Self; Irene, a fiercely proud ten-year-old mountain girl left homeless by the hard times; a roaring, fire-belching automobile nicknamed Thunderbolt, and many others. Theirs are stories of making do, getting by, and surviving, but they are equally of love of family and land.


Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Suzanne Pickett was first published on the children's page of the Birmingham News when she was eleven years old. She later wrote short stories and articles that appeared in Weird Tales magazine. She worked for many years as a reporter and columnist for the Centreville, Alabama, Press, which serialized five of her books, including an earlier version of The Path Was Steep.

An Alabama native, Norman MacMillan is retired from the University of Montevallo English department. His memoir Distant Son: An Alabama Boyhood was published in 2002 by the Cahaba Trail Commission. His plays, Truman Capote: Against a Copper Sky and Ashes and Roses (based on stories of Mary Ward Brown), have been produced in Monroeville, Mobile, Montgomery, Montevallo, and Marion, Alabama.

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