A Vein of Riches

by John Knowles

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction

343 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

John Knowles was an American novelist best known for A Separate Peace (1959).

Reviews

[John Tipper · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a coming-of-age novel, and also an historical one. Lyle is the son of a wealthy coal company owner, Clarkson. They live in a mansion in Middleburg, West Virginia. Minnie, the mother, is a dreamy, religious, liberal woman. Clarkson is conservative and a gung ho tycoon. Lyle goes through an identity crisis, trying to figure out if he's loyal to his rich family or the coal miners, who he at times sympathizes with. Knowles does a good job of describing the miners March on Logan, where they go to fight in the Battle of Blair Mountain. It's a set in the 1920s, post WW1. Lyle falls in love with an older woman, Doris Lee, a school teacher. She's a widow of a man who was killed in the battle accidentally. But Lyle feels responsible for his death, since he was at Blair Mt., posing as a journalist. His father and Doris Lee's husband had gone there looking for him. The problem of the narrative is the zigzagging plot. It goes into Minnie's boring conversations, to Lyle's problems with Doris Lee, to Clarkson's business dealings, and then his love affair with Doris Lee, who he meets up on a train. There's some good things in the book, but the social commentary tends to be simplistic, and some characters are one dimensional.