The Road to Matewan

I wrote the first words of this novel in 1972 after taking my grandmother to her childhood home in the Tug Valley of southern West Virginia. When we got back to Charleston, where she had raised her family of three children, she gave me a little paperback book titled Mingo County History. It was in that local history that I first read of the Matewan Massacre. I began immediately imagining her childhood along the Tug River and the history of the Tug Valley, Matewan, and the Battle of Blair Mountain.There was not a lot of information available about the Tug Valley and the Mine Wars in 1972. Now, mostly published in the last decade, there are many books, fiction and non-fiction, that provide an accurate history of southern West Virginia. For 45 years I have written and rewritten The Road to Matewan. The first draft, finished in 1975, was twice as long as the present version. I persevered because the story of the mountaineers of southern West Virginia was so important and needed to be told to the world. There will be readers of The Road to Matewan who first encounter this history in my book. Spreading this history is my intent. Appalachia, its coalfields, and especially the Tug Valley, are an American tragedy. When the liars and thieves representing the land and coal companies set about stealing the land from its pioneer owners, no one could have envisioned the feudal state that would be imposed upon the mountaineers of West Virginia. I know how important the history of the Tug Valley is to me, and I have seen how important that history is to the people who were uprooted, and to the descendents of those who stayed. Therefore, The Road to Matewan.

William Trent Pancoast is 67 years old and worked on The Road to Matewan for 45 years, beginning in 1972. Along the way he worked as a die maker and raised a family. He is now retired and lives in Ontario, Ohio.