Coal Miner's Bride

  Realistic

Sincerelyornot of Oregon, 10/10/2011

As usual, this Dear America diary is impressively realistic. My favorite part of the book is probably the parts where our heroine uses her trading skills to make money and feed the family. Unfortunately, many Eastern European cultures are anti-female, and the life of a woman (whether in America or at home) is not a pretty picture. The diary gives a more benign version complete with no violence and a happy ending, but its a good introduction to both the historical coal mines and ongoing immigrant culture (then and now, people don't tend to change when they change location, much as we'd like to think otherwise).