Strange as this Weather Has Been

Ann Pancake’s novel follows a group of people who live on Yellow Root Hollow (she should have used the term ‘holler’ since this is WV vernacular) and chronicles how the destructive forces of strip mining and mountaintop removal are ruining their land and their lives. Lace, the main character in the book, graduated from high school in 1983, the same year I graduated from high school in Boone County, WV (a place mentioned several times in the novel) so I immediately felt a connection with her. Unlike Lace I didn’t live in a holler and my father was not a coal miner but my grandfather and uncles were coal miners. My grandfather fought in the historic 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, a battle fought between the coal miners who wanted show more to unionize and the federal government. The coal companies want to strip mine Blair Mountain but preservationists are hoping to get the location slated as an historic site. The characters in this novel were very vivid and real for me and I miss them now that I’ve finished the book. If you are from the coal mining areas of WV or KY, grew up there, or just appreciate their beauty then this book will move you to tears and rile you to fight. I highly recommend this book to all of you hillbillies and nature lovers out there. Although my mother’s property hasn’t been affected yet the beautiful mountains that I woke up to every morning and hiked as a child are on the list for future demolition. If you want to learn more about mountaintop removal then please visit www.ohvec.org, www.appvoices.org, or www.ilovemountains.org. show less

I bought this book because years ago I read the stories of Breece D'J Pancake, who is, I believe, a distant cousin of Ann. Breece too wrote movingly and affectively about his native West Virginia. This new book, while unrelentingly grim and unceasingly sad, is an act of love on the author's part. She manages to convey her love of the hills, valleys and mountains of West Virgina, while offering the most scathing indictment of the unscrupulous methods of Big Coal. I was reminded of the books of Homer Hickam, author of Rocket Boys (aka October Sky. Suffice it to say that this is a beautiful piece of writing, but it's very hard to read because of its subject, the rape of a beautiful region.

As a native of Appalachia, I have read a number of books by our native authors. This novel I would rate among the best, particularly for one quality - it depicts - warmly and compassionately - contemporary life in the homes of the "working poor" of our mountains.

There is likewise a powerful appreciation here for the beautiful mountains and the beautiful people living there. Lloyal Jones has categorized one of the Values of mountain people as "love of place." This book achingly captures that value with a power like few others. The descriptions here of the woods and hills will, if you've moved away, make you homesick. And the characters are strongly drawn with edges and all. Ms. Pancake knows us!

There is, of course, no answer to the show more question so often on our lips and in our hearts - how can those who live in these beautiful hills so easily destroy them for short-term gain? show less

I read this book to try to capture MY own feelings and emotions of memories in the West Virginia Mountains. And I think Ann Pancake and I have traveled some of the same winding mountain roads. From Beckley to the New River Gorge familiarity abounded. But no where so much as in the characters we follow from a typically dysfunctional family, especially Lace and Bant who seemed every bit a piece of not only myself but so many of the people I’ve known. Mountain-folk or Flatlanders. Strange as this Weather Has Been revolves around Lace and Bant primarily. Mother and daughter looking at life in the mountains. And the choices left for their future; or lack there of. And about just how deep roots run. Told in the voices of the family members, show more SATWHB switches chronology and POV but I had no trouble following where who was where when or how they felt, which was crucial. Pancake’s prose kept me right there in both imagination and memory and I could smell the loamy humid richness of the dark of the wooded mountain. The family was one million percent believable and relatable. They are neighbors and friends we all know. They are headstrong girls making questionable decisions and they are headstrong boys feeling so inferior their only recourse becomes an over abundance of pride. And I loved each and every one. Despite themselves.My one criticism is wondering if those not familiar with this region; with abandoned mines and hollers filled with trailers on hewn out ‘shelves’ on the mountain side, would really have enough of a frame of reference to ‘get’ this book. But I’m not sure those without that frame of ref. were Pancakes target audience. Regardless, I say READ IT! Push on through the parts you don’t get, it’ll make enough sense and then you wont miss any of the wonderful Because you see Strange As This Weather Has Been reads like any best seller list dystopian novel. Except this is REAL. The conditions are REAL. The continued destruction is REAL!!! I could not believe these practices were not punishable by the harshest laws in the universe what mountain top removal strip mining does to IRREPARABLY harm this precious, precious ecosystem. And it is those who still live in nervous silence that I believe Ms Ann Pancake was trying to reach… and I wish I could help her. I very much loved this book, but in a way you love your teenager when they are being, well, teenagers: sometimes with difficulty. This book is emotionally challenging but more than worth the effort. I doubt it will leave you unchanged. My Ancestors settled an area called Panther Mountain. I don’t know yet where that is today exactly, but I hope Ann’s book helps save it. And, God Forbid, it doesn’t. I will trust Ann’s skill as a talented writer to keeping the memory of those who lived the unique life of West Virginia in all her shame and glory. show less

West Virginia native Lace See tried hard to escape the mountains of her childhood, but an irresponsible tryst with teenaged Jimmy Make left her pregnant and living back in her childhood home. Bereft of college, she received a different education in the company of her woods-wise mother and learned to love the mountains and forests around her like never before—a love that was passed along to daughter Bant.

At the open of the novel, Lace—now unhappily married to Jimmy Make and mother to four of his children—finds her beloved mountains threatened by strip mining operations that have literally destroyed an entire mountaintop and caused a flash flood that killed several of her neighbors and poisoned the waters. With Jimmy unable to work show more due to injury and Lace unable to supplement their income by collecting plants off the now-corrupted mountainsides, the family faces not only crushing poverty but the constant threat of further floods, poisonous water, and worse.

Beautifully written in the slow, almost elegiac rhythms of the region, “Strange as This Weather Has Been” is a moving meditation on humanity’s relationship with nature and humanity’s peculiar talent to destroy that which it should most cherish. Seen through the eyes of Lace and her children, the strip-mining of Appalachia becomes not just an environmental disaster, but an overwhelmingly personal human tragedy. show less

This story is successful if you think of it as a 'call to arms' rather than great literature. The author does her job. You can't walk away from this story without feeling the urgent need to do something to help stop the massive, long-term environmental destruction caused by the mountain top-removal process of mining that's still happening in West Virginia. But this isn't just about the destruction of some mountains; it's also about the lives of the people who have lived in these mountains for hundreds of years--whose homes, cultures and traditions, livelihoods, and very lives are being destroyed to benefit the short-term energy needs, as well as the economic profit, of relatively few people.

This book has been compared to [The Jungle] show more by Upton Sinclair as well as [The Dollmaker] by Harriet Arnow. It's been a long time since I've read The Jungle, but this book falls short of The Dollmaker because the author just couldn't resist adding another fact, another detail, another story--which she introduces by continuing to add more and more characters. Eventually the characters just become a story-telling device. It's too bad, because I really cared about the Make Family and through their perspectives alone, the author has a very powerful, and moving story to tell. show less

Amazing first novel. Anyone who's recommended by Wendell Berry as embodying West Virginia you already surmise is going to be good, but read it for yourself. You'll be happy you did. Strange as This Weather brought back feelings from my childhood, growing up half-wild in all the unkempt corners of my neighborhood, but amplifies them to a beautiful and heart-wrenching degree.