Serendipity Hollow

The first story of a fiction trilogy set in Boone County, West Virginia. The story follows the adventures of two people on opposite sides of a contentious Appalachian issue, surface mining of coal. Mark Hopkins is a 27-year-old wealthy landowner and coal mine operator whose business is under attack from environmentalists. He considers lawyers in general a plague and thinks the environmental activists should be addressing Appalachia's other problems and social issues instead of trying to wreck one of the region's few viable industries. Sarah Austen is a 23-year-old public defender and part time environmental lawyer working to preserve the Appalachian Mountains' beauty and environment from the devastation of surface mining coal. Her goal is to close the Hopkins' mine. She is not above trespassing to find permit violations to use as the basis for legal action that will revoke the company's permit. Mark's effort to save a poor neighborhood boy, Frank Arthur, from jail soon entangles them with Sarah, the public defender. They meet, fight, realize they will never sway the other's opinion, discover they like their opponent, and during the way, they enrich the life of an abandoned twelve year-old boy, Frank Arthur.