Bankmules: The Story of Van Lear, a Kentucky Coal Town

BANKMULES is mostly a celebration of a boyhood in a coal-mining town in eastern Kentucky, a nostalgic look back to a time and place that exists only in memory. It begins in 1934 with the eight-year-old author's story of a railroad excursion to a baseball double-header in Cinninnati. A year later the boy's father and eight other miners lose their lives in a methane gas explosion. But life goes on as volunteers struggle to preserve the town's heritage..