[♪♪♪♪♪] -♪ Every day every day Every day ♪ ♪ Every day I write the book ♪ [♪♪♪♪♪] -Welcome, I'm Rose Martin, and we are Write Around The Corner in Richmond, Virginia with debut novelist Jeff Barnes.

His book Mingo is set in the early 1900s and has two brothers on opposite sides during the mine war.

Their mother passes away.

One brother gets moved to Richmond.

One brother stays in the coal mine.

And chaos erupts, and they find themselves on opposite sides.

Jeff, welcome to Write Around The Corner .

-Rose, thanks so much for having me and for coming to beautiful Richmond.

-Oh, and this setting is beautiful.

So, thank you for inviting us to your home.

So, currently, you're an author, but yet, still a practicing attorney?

-That's right.

I've been practicing law now for about 37 years, and I'm a trial lawyer.

And so, I practice law during the week and, at least while I was writing Mingo , did my writing during the weekends.

-And I read that about you, that you're like, "I have to concentrate on one job at a time, and make sure that I save my writing time."

But yet, you really looked forward to that Saturday morning and digging back into the book.

-Absolutely.

It was so much fun for me.

But it was such a temptation that if-- I've read like, for instance, John Grisham would write in the mornings while he was still practicing law, and I was afraid if I did that, I'd get to my day job, my legal job, and I'd be thinking about my book and not my legal work.

So, I tried to compartmentalize.

-Keep sets of characters separate, right?

-Exactly.

-Exactly.

Exactly.

So, you've also got a family history with the coal mines.

And take me back to your family lineage with Southwest Virginia and the experience in the coal mines.

-So, my father was born in Pocahontas, Virginia in May of 1919, exactly a year before sort of the Matewan Shootout or Battle of Matewan.

And Pocahontas was a coal-boom town in the late 1800s.

I think they opened their first mine maybe in 1883.

And by 1919, when he was born, the decline in Pocahontas had started.

But what fascinated me about his youth in Pocahontas was his best friends, or many of them, were first-generation Italians, Hungarians, whose parents had come here looking for a better way of life and ended up there in the coal fields.

And hearing him talk about these friends whose parents didn't speak English, or didn't speak it very well, which is so different than what I had experienced growing up just down the road in Tazewell.

-Well, and it was interesting because people think that Southwest Virginians have an accent, right, just being native to an area.

So, then you couple that with Italian immigrants and Hungarian immigrants, and yet, the coal mine towns were set up by culture, right?

Like there was the Italian section, or there might have been the Hungarian section or the Southwest Virginia section.

So, there wasn't a total intermingling unless they were in the mine.

-I think that's right.

I think they-- -[Rose] Okay.

-And of course, there were-- I don't even begin to know how many coal companies and coal camps there were throughout Southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia back in the early 1900s, but let's suffice it to say there were many, many, so I don't know that I can generalize too much, but certainly my understanding is yes, the Hungarians sort of lived together and the Italians lived together.

The Blacks lived together.

And so, but when it came time to work, they were all down in the pit as they called it, working together side by side.

-What was the trigger for you that you thought, "You know, I think I wanna write a book about the coal mines and this part of Southwest Virginia, and I'm gonna set it back at this conflict time in the early 1900s."

-Well, like I say, my father grew up there in Pocahontas, and I grew up in Tazewell.

And a lot of my good friends, their fathers were involved in the coal industry back in the '60s, '70s, when I was a kid.

But as a kid, I knew about what we call-- we knew it as the Matewan Massacre.

It was this shootout, May, I believe, of 1920, on the main street of Matewan, West Virginia, broad daylight.

And it was a gun battle that involved probably-- well, dozens, let's say coal miners, pro-union coal miners, and 11 Baldwin-Felts agents.

And Baldwin-Felts agents were-- think of them as like Pinkertons.

They were a detective agency, a security agency, that the coal companies hired to keep the union out and the mines open.

And so, I knew about this gunfight, and it amazed me that a gunfight could erupt main street of a town during my father's lifetime.

And as I've said before, when I'm thinking about this or learning about this event as a kid in the, let's say, early 1970s, we were as close to 1920 then as we are to 1970 now.

-Yeah, it's true.

-So, it wasn't like it was ancient history at the time.

It may seem like it to many people now.

So, I was fascinated by that.

And when I decided I wanted to write a book, I wanted to write a book that involved brothers who ended up on opposite sides of this conflict.

Because again, as a kid, I was intrigued by brothers who fought on opposite sides of the Civil War, and how does that happen?

We grow up hearing blood's thicker than water, and if it is, how do brothers end up opposing each other?

I have two brothers, and we've always been very close, and I can't imagine opposing them in any type of a conflict.

-Well, and I read somewhere that you had said, "If you want to learn history, go ahead and read the book.

But if you wanna understand history, what do you need to do?"

-You need to read historical fiction.

-Yeah, you need to read historical fiction.

And that struck me because I thought, it's true, if we read about an event in history and we're reading it in the history books, you might skim over it.

You might just read it, but it doesn't come to life like it does in a book which is historical fiction.

I thought that was so-- it just struck me, and something else you said struck me, and I've thought about it in my daily life ever since I read it.

And it's about the pancake, the thin pancake.

So, share with everyone what you're saying is about the pancake.

-Sure.

So, late in the book, when Durwood, the younger of the two brothers, arrives back in Matewan, first time he's been back in 12 years, he gets caught up in this Matewan shootout battle that we've been discussing.

And luckily, he doesn't get killed, seven of the 11 Baldwin-Felts agents were killed that day.

He doesn't get killed, but it stokes his anger at the union coal miners, and he encounters a woman who just sort of is his guardian angel.

She protects him from the clutches of Sid Hatfield, the town police chief.

And he told her he had come back that to secure justice for his friend who had been killed, also by the coal miners.

And she asked him about, "Well, what does that mean?

What does justice mean?"

"I'm gonna make him pay."

And she said, "Well, you know, you might want to step back and remember that no matter how thin a pancake is, every pancake has two sides and try to see the other side.

What would cause these people in broad daylight to engage in a gun battle there?

So, you might want to figure that out before you go getting yourself killed."

-Yeah.

Well, and that goes into the premise of you get success from other people and the help that you get from other people.

So, what kind of help did you get in putting this book together, and your process of the people who read it first, the people who helped you bring this book to life?

-Well, so probably in about 2015, I took a short story class that was taught by a Richmond novelist and playwright and great creative writing instructor, a gentleman by the name of David Robbins.

And in that writing-- in that short story class, there were four or five others that were people that I met.

And we decided to form a writing group, and each person working on a novel, and we worked together, and which, only lasted a year because two of the four finished their books in a year.

And it took me quite a bit longer, but it provided that accountability, and we would provide feedback to each other, and it was really beneficial for me.

And then I had some really wonderful beta readers and, who, again, as I was writing chapters almost like a serial novel, they were reading the chapters and giving me their feedback.

So, I had this wonderful help from them.

And then, I guess I really need to go all the way back to high school and tell you about, I had a couple of wonderful high school English teachers, and one in particular, Iva Dean, who still lives in Tazewell.

She's in her late 80s now.

So, she came and heard me speak last year when I was in Tazewell.

And she is the sister of Freida J. Riley.

Freida J. Riley was the teacher who inspired Homer Hickam, if you're familiar with the book Rocket Boys and the movie October Sky .

And so, Iva Dean is Freida J. Riley's sister, and she was an inspiration to me.

She was a tough grader, but also let me write some horrible attempts at fiction, humored me, and let me do it.

And she would edit and give it back to me.

And so, I have to go all the way back to high school to thank her for the contribution I think she made to my writing.

-I think that's wonderful.

How about your parents?

Were they writers or voracious readers?

-They were not.

They read a lot, but they didn't read fiction, interestingly, or not much fiction that I'm aware of.

My father read all the time.

My mother in later life read, but again, they were not big fiction readers.

-How about-- you have two daughters?

-I do.

-Writers?

Readers?

-Readers, particularly one, the younger one's a big reader.

She was just here this weekend and went back on the train to New York and said she read the whole way home, but yeah.

-But haven't caught the writing bug yet?

-Not yet, but there's still time.

[Rose] Absolutely, and I was thinking, so you joined a writing club and a writing class, even though you write a lot for your job.

You're constantly writing.

Was it just that you thought it took a different type of writing?

Or what was the impetus to say, "You know, even though I write all day long, and I've got good command of the English language, I think I just wanna try a class."

-Ever since my older daughter, who's now almost 30, I think it was the first year she was alive, which would've been 1993, I started writing a Christmas letter.

And it's a very tongue-in-cheek Christmas letter that now I think we send it to like 200 people.

And it's just telling about all the goofy things we've done for that year.

And my wife had been encouraging me for years that I needed to write a book.

And I kept telling her it's a lot harder to write a book than a two-page Christmas letter.

Which one of the few times in our marriage that I've been right.

So, 2015, we see this class offered by David Robbins.

She goes, "You ought to take that class."

And so, it was really her inspiration and motivation that, "Hey, you need to take this and think about writing a book."

-Aw, that's wonderful.

So, when you think about your process, I understand you're in between, not quite a plotter and not quite a pantser?

-Correct, yeah.

In our writing group, we sort of ran the gamut, I think, but we had one person, very successful writer, who is a plotter and she had color outlines, and then others who were by the seat of their pants.

And I was kind of in between.

Once I had done the research, I spent from probably January of '17 to May of '17 doing heavy research, doing a lot of reading, went to the Matewan, the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum.

And so, by the time I'd finished that research, what I realized was there were just some fab-- the bones of a great story were there.

Great characters, Mother Jones, Sid Hatfield, Don Chaffin, and then these amazing, real-life events, the shootout we've been talking about.

There was an event in February of 1913 where an armed, armored train shot up a union tent camp.

And so, those events that I uncovered during my research sort of served as mile markers, mileposts.

So, I had the arc of the story and the arc of the characters, but I didn't know what each chapter was gonna be until Saturday morning when I'd sit down at the computer at seven o'clock a.m. and I'd take stock of where I was in the story and where I was in the character development and decide, "Okay, what do I need to do with this chapter?"

And then, I would sit down and craft a chapter or part of a chapter on Saturday and then Sunday, and try to refine it, and at the end of the weekend, have something that I wouldn't be embarrassed to show somebody.

-So, at the end of the weekend, you did your editing for the work that you had accomplished during your weekend writing?

-Yes, I edit, I mean, all the time.

And as I'm writing it, I edit it.

And then, but on Sundays, I particularly would go back and edit, try to edit heavily, and again, try to finish a section or a chapter.

-Did the characters ever surprise you of what was gonna be happening or what direction it went?

-It did, or they did.

Initially, my initial conception was the book was gonna be primarily about Durwood, the younger brother.

-And it had a different title at first, right?

-It did, My Brother's Keeper .

But it was gonna be about Durwood.

And as I got more into the book, I found Bascom became a more and more interesting character and, certainly, you know, a co-equal to Durwood.

And maybe even he had a little bit more emphasis on Bascom because, again, he's the one stayed behind in the mines.

He's the one who's experiencing all the privations and the struggles that the union or the pro-union folks were experiencing back in the early 1900s.

-And it was a little bit of an older brother, you know, older brother.

So, if we meet the characters in Mingo , you've mentioned Durwood, and you've mentioned Bascom.

So, let's give the viewers a little bit more about Durwood.

Who is he?

What is he like?

And we already said in the intro, he ended up having to leave his family, but they're living in a coal mine town, just the four of them initially.

-Yes, they were living in Mingo County and the nearest town was Matewan.

Their mother dies in 1908.

She was sort of the glue that held the family together.

The father couldn't take care of eight-year-old Durwood because he and, at that point, Bascom, who was 13, was already working in the coal mines.

And so, honoring their mother's last wish, their Pa sent Durwood to Richmond to live with the mother's well-to-do relative cousin.

And so, Durwood arrives in Richmond, and he's a bit rough around the edges.

He thinks he's there just until things settle down.

-And that kind of broke my heart, that part about, "Well, just until things settle down, and then you'll be coming back home."

Because it was an entirely world shift for him from, you know, being on the train to the things that he saw to the indoor plumbing, to everything.

And you crafted that really beautifully because I felt like I'm on that train, or I'm watching with him, but then I'm also feeling sad for him because he is out of place and he's getting called names and he's trying to still be comfortable in this new surrounding.

So, there was a-- there was a sense of yes, you had us feeling grateful for him, that he had a chance, but sad that he had to learn kind of living all over again.

But they loved him.

-Yes, they did.

I mean, the home that he went into, and eventually they adopted him, wonderful people, and treated him like their own son.

They didn't have children.

And he was really helped in the assimilation process to Richmond by a couple of other characters: Hattie who was the Black domestic worker in the home where he-- where Durwood had moved.

And she was full of character and integrity and told him early on, "Don't ever be ashamed of, you know, who you are, where you came from."

-Yeah.

And I thought that was poignant, especially at the time, because he was questioning everything, because it was all new.

So, introduce us to his brother.

-Okay.

Bascom was a little bit older than Durwood.

He was six years older.

And like I say, when the book opens, he's already working in the mines at 13, which was pretty common back at that point in time.

In fact, much younger kids were working; they called them breaker boys, separating the coal from the slag that came in.

And so, he's already working there.

The brothers were incredibly tight, and it was really hard on Bascom to see his younger brother go, particularly as he's watching his father descend into alcoholism.

So, he's left behind, you know, sort of picking up the pieces.

And he chafes at the oppression that is visited upon him by the coal operators and the things that he doesn't think are fair.

And when a tragic circumstance happens to one of his coworkers, he lashes out and gets in trouble for it.

And then, he's forced to pay some medical bills of another person.

And at that point, he resolves he's getting out of the coal mines.

As soon as he pays off this debt, he's gone.

-Well, and for people to understand who are unfamiliar with coal mines, so, they were paid in script that they could only use at the coal store, and they were charged for their housing, and they were also deducted for medical, and they were deducted for any number of things.

So, to understand the culture he was living in, and then the culture he went to is totally different.

-Oh, completely different.

I mean, the coal miners back then had to pay for the tools that they used to dig the coal.

They had to pay for the dynamite that they used to blast the coal so that they could cut it up and get it out.

They paid for then the coal that they bought back from the company to heat their houses.

They paid rent on the houses.

They had-- and typically got paid in script.

Each company had its own form of currency only redeemable at that company store.

-So, that even made it tougher in order to try to get out.

But he found a way to get out, and he makes a trip that has a lot of adventure in that trip for him getting to see his brother finally in Richmond, that we're not gonna give that away, but he finds himself, again, heading back.

So, it was interesting because the mother dies early on in the book.

I'm not giving anything away, but yet the impact that she had on her boys and the impact for the family legacy of the story, you kind of carried that all the way through so we always felt her and thought that she was there.

-Right.

I mean, she clearly was a glue that held the family together.

She raised those boys in a religious household.

And I think, obviously, she felt strongly about service to others because both of the boys had it along with a strong work ethic.

And so, her presence is felt even though, you know, she's-- the book opens with her funeral.

-Right.

So then, because of the fact that he goes back and there's been trouble at the mines, he finds family members displaced, and then he tries to get involved in truly helping other people, which is one of the things that he felt family is everything.

So, family comes together, we're gonna jump in and help.

-Right.

In times of trouble, family comes together.

-So, we find ourselves then with a major historical event with the wars and with the execution that happened and that's part of history.

So, when you were weaving that part of it together, it just seemed to go very naturally of what had to happen with him coming back and then all of that erupting into the brothers being on opposite sides of that.

Was that a struggle for you to do that?

-No, I mean, it worked out pretty well.

He comes back to help some family members who got caught up in a strike, and he wants to leave, but then circumstances interfere and make him feel like he's gotta stay there.

He left behind a girlfriend in Richmond and a good job and the chance to succeed outside of the hard scrabble living that he grew up in West Virginia.

-And you also have the juxtaposition of the miners and then the union workers, and then you brought us in with Mother Jones to whatever impact and influence that she had in there amongst the people.

And then, it's obviously got a lot of detail about what happened during that conflict and how the brothers saw each other, how they ended up, because they were so little.

When Durwood was little-- he was eight years old.

And then it takes us through a period of time that there was so much internal conflict for how you were raised and what you believe, but then you have this whole conflict of the mine wars.

-Sure.

Both of the brothers, I think, epitomized the external struggle and this idea of many people saw it, what was going on then, as sort of that the union was a shill for the socialists.

And keep in mind that in 1917, the Bolsheviks had gotten control of Russia, and they made no secret of the fact that they intended to export communism throughout the world.

And I think there were some people who saw this union struggle as a plot to overthrow the government and our way of life.

Other people, I think, saw it kind of as a convenient boogeyman, a way to get public opinion on the side of the coal companies.

And then as Bascom said, and I think this seems to me to be somewhat true, for most of the coal miners, it was a bread-and-butter issue.

-Right.

-They wanted to be paid a fair wage for an honest day's work and a relatively safe environment and to be treated better than the draft mules that hauled the coal out the mines, and that's what it was all about.

Durwood, though, had grown up in a more capitalistic environment and had some things happen that influenced his vision of things, including fighting the Bolsheviks in Russia during World War I as part of the American Expeditionary forces.

So, these brothers bring to it each side of the pancake to this larger struggle.

-Would you be willing to read something for us?

-It'd be my pleasure.

-Okay.

-I'm gonna read from-- it's chapter nine.

Chapter nine is set August 10th of 1909 in the Paint Lick Mine, where the father Pa and Bascom worked.

It's a year after Durwood has left to go to Richmond.

And it's a scene that involves Bascom and this older miner who was getting ready to retire, a man named Abner, who was Bascom's mentor.

"Bascom followed Abner through the main shaft.

"He kept one eye on the ground, the other overhead.

"He found the roofing timbers especially worrisome "right after a shot had given everything a good shimmy.

"Abner stooped to navigate the main shaft.

"Bascom wanted to hurry.

"The first to reach the blast area "reaped the coal littering the ground.

"Busting up coal on the ground "was easier than clawing it from the scene.

"Abner made up for a slow gait with his experience.

"Sheltering closer to the blast zone than most dared, "they would be among the first to arrive.

"Abner's limp had seemed to worsen the last few weeks, "'Stick close to Abner and do as he says,' "Pa had told him, "'He'll teach you everything you need to know.

"Most important, he'll teach you how to stay alive.'

"Turning from the main shaft to a smaller one, "the roof lowered, forcing Bascom to bend more.

"Before they reached where they had set the charge, "rhythmic thumps signaled "they wouldn't get the best spot today.

"Bascom entered the chamber "where they had worked the next few days.

"Two lights bobbed at the far side where the roof was highest.

"Coal lay scattered about waiting to be cleaved "into smaller, more manageable bits.

"'Mind if we join this party?'

"A man grunted between strikes.

"'That you, Abner?'

"'In the flesh.'

'Who's with you?'

"'Clem's boy, Bascom.'

'What are you two waiting for?

"Coal don't bust itself.'

"Bascom stepped around to Abner "to tear into a three-foot seam exposed by the blast.

"The coal glistened as his tool bit.

"A stray blow struck the occasional spark.

"'Why are you working so hard "when there's easy pickings at your feet?'

"Bascom didn't let up, 'Pa says I'm too soft.'

"'Let me tell you something, son.

"Being soft and showing you care about folks "ain't the same thing.

"You'll toughen up down here just fine or die trying, "but lose your kindness, "and there ain't no difference between you and them draft mules "that hump our coal out to the scales.'

"'Yes, sir.'

"More men filtered into the room, "indistinguishable shadows, "human windmills in motion until they coughed.

"You could judge a man's time underground "by the timber of his hacking.

"In the light of day, the degree of stoop to a man's shoulders "spoke volumes about his time underground.

"How long till folks could tell he dug coal?

"'Let me tell you something else, "your Pa's a good man.

He loves you.'

"Leaning against the wall, "Abner untied his kerchief from around his neck "to wipe his brow.

"Bascom rested his pick on his shoulder.

"'Losing your Ma and little brother "in one fell swoop took a toll on him.

"Give him time.'

"'It's been a year.

"Ain't like he's the only one suffered a loss.

"Beside he's the one that shipped Durwood off.

"Works all day.

"Nighttime, he mostly drinks "and stares at a photograph of Ma and Durwood.

"Like to worn holes in that picture, "hardly says a word.

Don't eat much neither.'

"'Just because he pines for your ma and your brother "don't mean he cares any less for you.'

"'Be nice if he showed it every now and then.'

"'I've been knowing Clem a long time.

"He's a man of few words.

You said so yourself.

"Been my experience, the people who talk the least tend to mean it the most.'"

-Aw, what a great section you picked.

-Thank you.

-Thank you so much for inviting us here to your home.

And I learned a lot about the mine wars and part of history that I wasn't really that familiar with before.

So, thank you for that too.

-Good.

Thank you so much for having me, Rose.

-My special thanks to Jeff Barnes to inviting us here to his beautiful home in Richmond.

There's a couple of takeaways of this book for me.

I guess one of them is that thing he said about the pancake.

No matter how thin a pancake, remember, it always has two sides.

And I think there's something in that for all of us.

Check out more of our conversation with Jeff online, and tell your friends about us.

And until next time, remember, I'm Rose Martin, and I'll see you Write Around The Corner .

-♪ Every day every day Every day every day every day ♪ ♪ Every day I write the book ♪ ♪ Every day every day Every day ♪ ♪ Every day I write the book ♪ ♪ Every day every day Every day ♪ ♪ Every day I write the book ♪