About The Authors
John grew up in the hollows of West Virginia. He remembers when his family was the first in the hollow to get a private phone line. In the fall of 1978, John had a D in West Virginia History. The next quarter his teacher switched from fill-in-the-blank to essay tests. Suddenly, John was getting A’s.
He hadn’t been interested in showing he knew the information, but the story itself–that mattered. History as a story has meaning and life. By spring John found himself kneeling in the rotunda of the state capital ready to be inducted into the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe for excellence in WV history. Then Governor, Jay Rockefeller, happened to walk up and take knighting duty over from the state superintendent of schools. John, a great-grandson of coal camp workers, was knighted by the grandson of a coal baron. Their ancestors had struggled against each other in economic and literal warfare. That struggle has not completely waned and, to a lesser degree, it continues with this book.
Like Winthrop Lane, an early chronicler of the coal wars, Becky has deep roots in Indiana. She is a graduate of the Herron School of Art and Design of Indiana University at IUPUI whose work has been shown in galleries, museums, and conferences across the country. Representative samples of her other work are available for viewing at It’s the Nature of Things.
Becky has illustrated several children’s books and taught at Belle Meade School along with John who was head of the school for several years. She is the recipient of a 2019 Claudia Mitchell Grant for the Arts.
