Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 12, 1995                   TAG: 9502100125
SECTION: BOOK                    PAGE: F6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY JOAN VANNORSDALL SCHROEDER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FIRST NOVEL TELLS HARD TRUTH OF LIFE IN THE COAL MINES

\ Barbara Angle's first novel isn't a pretty piece of work. Chronicling a woman's growing-up in the West Virginia coalfields, "Those That Mattered" takes a hard, elemental look at men and women, dangerous work and its consequences, and the geography of poverty.

As a girl, Portia Crowe sees the lot of women in her small mining town and doesn't like it. For them, there is the solace of religion, scant shelter from their husbands' alcoholism and wandering eyes. She also sees the consequences of a life in the mines: black lung, accidents and a pervasive bitterness worn like a birthmark.

Portia begs her father to take her down into the mines, where he tells her, "It's goin' against the nature of things, going into places God never intended for man to go. Humans upset the balance of things when they go to mining, and if a man don't get a little scared thinkin' about that, he ain't much for brains."

Portia leaves town to attend West Virginia University, gets a degree in journalism and catches the bus home where she takes a day job as a file clerk and frequents Whetzel's Bar at night. She drifts into a passionless marriage with a fundamentalist preacher via pregnancy, gets her teaching certificate and feels as colorless as the stripped mountains around her.

It is this portion of the book that feels rushed, in which Angle tries to cover a decade in a few pages of summary statements rather than present scenes which would relay the same information.

When Portia takes a job in the mines, "Those That Mattered" becomes factual and angry, as the author's own experience as one of the first female coal miners becomes the driving force behind the story. There is a stunning specificity to the last part of Angle's novel. From the physical assault mounted by the male miners as they use Portia for a hands-on first-aid demonstration to the account of a horrific mining accident, the prose is relentless and unadorned.

Though one wishes for a less "tomorrow is another day" ending to "Those That Mattered," the story is compelling and the prose restrained. The grand-daughter of a miner and herself a veteran of the mines, Barbara Angle knows what she's writing about and tells the hard truth in the process.

Joan Vannorsdall Schroeder's first novel is "Solitary Places."