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

by Suzannee Pickett (Author), Norman McMillan (Foreword by)

Sue Pickett was a coal miner's daughter who became a coal miner's wife and witnessed and lived through the turbulent years of the Great Depression and the sometimes violent struggles between labor unions and coal mine bosses throughout the Appalachian South--especially her native Alabama. The dramatic central episode in her account is a March 1934 standoff between striking miners and the mine owners.

Pickett's story is peopled with memorable characters, including her irrepressible husband David and an almost Biblical cast of other family members; a roaring, fire-belching automobile nicknamed Thunderbolt; Irene, a fiercely proud ten-year-old mountain girl left homeless by the hard times; and many others. The memoir is a saga of determined working-class people making do and getting by, but equally of their love of family and land.

Front Jacket

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.

Author Biography

SUZANNE PICKETT was first published when she was eleven years old on the children's page of the Birmingham News. She later wrote short stories and articles that appeared in Weird Tales magazine and worked for many years as a reporter and columnist for the Centreville (AL) Press, which serialized five of her books.