I picked up a copy of this book because it sounded exciting. It started out fine but then I quickly realized that I had no interest what so ever about the characters in the book. I put it down and was not planning on reading anymore of it but then I read some of the other readers thoughts who enjoyed the book and thought I would give it another try. Nope, nothing changed for me in fact, I thought that the story read depressing. Myrthen was frigid. Alta was uninteresting. In fact, I would not want to be friends with either lady. Yet, this book may have hints of being religious but it was not the main focus. So if you are worried about that aspect of the book then you don't have to be. I finally gave up at page 132. This book was not my cup of tea.

Melodrama. The writing is superb, but I didn't always believe the character's actions. I can't say any more as I have to review this for Library Journal.

*Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in return for an honest review*

This book runs on the atmosphere. I felt an outsider getting a small view of a very closed community. I felt that there are secrets. That I was not told everything despite getting the whole story.
I did not like Myrthen much but I guess she is positioned like that. Early in the book I had the feeling there was more wrong with her than just a very unhealthy obsession with religion. There are more signals from people in her surrounding that it is the case but it never gets explained. Alta is easier to relate with though I did have some trouble with a few of her motivations concerning her relationship. Reading about both woman growing up in the same town with such different lives but still being connected was interesting.
Gabriel's part of the story was lost on me. I read it but it was not what I imagined it would be. Still I kept reading as I had to know if more would happen and what the result would be.

A coal mining town was a world unto itself. Such was the concept conveyed by this very talented writer. Having grown up on the east coast, I had an awareness of microcosms tucked away in the hills of West Virginia. The tale offers a total immersion! The ethnic strains, the strong presence of the Catholic Church, the very limitedness of the people with regard to perspectives and avenues of escape – all are in the mix and combine to establish a vivid setting. How thoroughly the mine dominated their lives! The shifts dictated daily schedules of the townspeople with regard to eating, sleeping and socializing. Financial mobility, life expectancy and ambition were likewise caught in the all-encompassing web. Few escaped, as people were poor, and there was pressure for young men to ‘go down’ after high school in order to contribute financially. Reminders of the transitory nature of life and death were ever present.

‘Mining coal was like challenging the grim reaper every shift. Most times, the miners won. But those times they didn’t, the tragedy scythed a notch out of the town’s soul. Nobody wanted to remember but they never could forget’.

It seems to have been a harsh existence, laced with much hardship and few joys. Fascinating, however, and I remained totally enthralled, as the lives of these colorful characters unfolded!
The author’s mother-in-law grew up in a coal mining town, and provided a great deal of insight. I was delighted to learn that Homer Hickham was also an advisor! He was the author of October Sky, which was set in a coal mining town, and was eventually made into a very memorable movie.

3.5 Stars

Interesting account of early to mid twentieth century American life in a mining town with all the small town gossip which can lead to harm.

Thoroughly enjoyable novel. So many times I didn't want to set it down. Characters are dynamic, and you can't help but feel for them and become attached. The setting and imagery were beautifully rendered, and the plot was a real page turner. This book was being featured at one of our local bookstores, and I am so glad that I took a chance and picked it up.

The main thing about this was that there wasn’t any emotional attachment to the characters. If I’m going to like a book, I have to care what happens to the people in it, and that just didn’t happen. People in a book need distinct traits: recurring personality points, habits, a sense of humor (or lack of one), a certain “voice” that makes them stand out, and the people in this had very little appeal to make me want to find out what happened to them. It didn’t help that there were probably too many of them, and too many points of view to allow time to form some sort of bond with them.

There were huge gaps where important developments were skipped, like what happened between Myrthen and her parents after her sister died (not a spoiler if you read the summary)? Obviously it was significant due to the interaction between them as she got older, especially with her mother, but there were no scenes included that developed the relationship to the snapping point that it eventually reached. Another character had barely been introduced before the author had a traumatic event happening to her, before there was any reason to care what happened to her. And I didn’t think that this particular event was done sensitively at all. Instead of being revealed slowly or hinted at, it was thrown in my face with virtually every detail described, which utterly destroyed the emotional impact as it came off as more trashy than sad or disturbing.

Interaction between characters often wasn’t believable, like when a woman finds out that someone is virtually stalking her son, and instead of bringing it up to her husband to keep the son away from the stalker, apparently says nothing. Convenient opportunity for Stalker to attack. And when the girl with the trauma tries to tell her friend about it, the friend actually tells her to keep it to herself because hearing about it might upset people. This friend was supposed to be the “wise older woman” of the book, but shuts down someone who tries to talk about something that she was clearly extremely distraught over. I could not believe the stupidity.

The writing style was pretty flat, or else over-the-top. The language didn’t create an atmosphere that made me feel I was in a West Virginian coal-mining town, and the dialogue seemed unnatural at times, like one character saying about trying to forget a bad memory that he “let the weight of time hold it down deep.” Who talks like that?! Nobody, least of all a coal miner with no education beyond high school. Writers need to worry less about being poignantly descriptive when it comes to how their characters speak, and more about making them come off realistically. Perhaps more research should have been done on the area, like visiting or living there, to build a believable setting and its inhabitants.

I gave it two stars instead of one for the middle, where some interesting things happened between women and the husbands they were coerced or guilted into marrying, and characters finally got some of the development and complexity they deserved. It tapered off after that, and went back to being detached and pretentiously wordy.

TLDR- Another supposedly-compelling and atmospheric novel, with not much more than a pretty cover.

Meh. It was okay. Interesting premise but I felt the first half of the book was all backstory and the last half more backstory with a little bit of action at the end. The characters were well written and she captured the town well. But as a complete story I think she missed an opportunity. Her engaging writing voice kept me turning pages, but left me frustrated at the end.

For a variety of political and economic reasons, a whole way of life in West Virginia is slowly dying out. An abundance of cheap alternate fuel natural gas, combined with strict environmental regulations requiring that coal plants meet strict clean air regulations, means that coalminers have less and less reason to risk their lives underground every day. But that was not the case during the twentieth century when the coal industry was still the chief employer of generations of West Virginians.

Verra is very much a coal town when Myrthen Bergmann’s parents arrive there as young German immigrants in 1916, and soon enough, Otto Bergmann finds his place in Verra’s coal mine. Within a few months, the young couple has twin daughters, Myrthen and Ruth, and is doing well – and all remains well until a tug-of-war scuffle between Myrthen and Ruth leaves Ruth lying dead at the base of the cellar stairs. Myrthen, never able to admit to herself that she was the cause of her sister’s death, decides to become a nun and seems certain to achieve her goal until one night of passion leads to a wedding rather than to a convent.

Alta Krol, a neighbor of Myrthen’s, wants badly someday to be an artist but she is trapped in a life of caring for her widowed father and her siblings. Alta, though, has a suitor, albeit a man she has known for less than five months, and when he proposes, she accepts. But when the smoke clears, and the two women are married, it turns out that Myrthen marries the man that Alta will always wish that she had married.

The second part of Whisper Hollow takes place in the 1960s, but in the meantime, the world has come crashing down around the ears of both Myrthen and Alta. The two women are not living lives anything at all like the lives they had dreamed of living as young women – and with good reason. This portion of Whisper Hollow, however, centers around a young couple beginning their own marriage in 1965.

Lidia and Danny are, as the old song goes, “teenagers in love,” and they expect to spend the rest of their lives together – just not in Verra, West Virginia. Danny and his mother are only in Verra to take care of his grandfather, and Danny plans to go to law school as soon as he finishes high school there. Lidia, however, has some news for him: she is pregnant and they need to get married now, not later. A few years later when Gabriel, their four-year-old, starts to reveal delicate secrets from Verra’s dark past, Lidia and Danny will wish they had left town when they had the chance.

Whisper Hollow is a highly atmospheric fifty-year look at life in one of America’s coal company towns. It portrays the strength and stamina necessary on the parts of men and women to survive the physical and mental pressures associated with that kind of work, and it makes clear just how dedicated these men are to the welfare of their families. What else could keep them going back into the darkness day after day the way they do?