The Evening Hour

I’m very late to this one, but it was worth the wait. Carter Sickels’s The Evening Hour (Bloomsbury, 2012) follows Cole Freeman through Dove Creek, WV. From the beginning, we see Cole as this split person: the heartbroken, tender child and the gritty adult trying to set moral boundaries in a tough environment. The magic Sickels weaves is in mirroring that same dichotomy with the land itself. Amid the characters of the town of Dove Creek—of which there are many—the land is a constant. She is ravaged and wounded, and she finally breaks at the onslaught of assaults: a coal slurry pond bursts, flooding the community in dark, noxious sludge.

As a Berea College student, I once interviewed folks in a Kentucky community whose entire town had been flooded by coal slurry (a byproduct of the coal mining industry that is stored in containment ponds often above hollers). A slurry pond broke and an ungodly amount of black coal sludge rushed through their homes in the middle of the night. Hearing their stories was a formative moment in my life. It is one reason I chose Appalachian Studies as a minor.

In The Evening Hour, Sickels brings to life the often incongruous feelings that stem from extractive capitalism. There is mountain top removal set against a grandmother’s biscuits. There is a soft want next to rooted addiction. There is loneliness in the midst of community.

I highly recommend reading The Evening Hour and then watching The Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man (Mimi Pickering, 1975) on Appalshop’s YouTube channel. Also, be sure to read Sickels’s The Prettiest Star, which will always be one of my favorite books.