King Coal, King Jesus, and Moonshine: Faith and life in Appalachian fiction

Theology Today, Jul 1999 by Smylie, James

While this famous story is not as compelling as Murfree's tale of the prophet of the Cumberland Mountains, it is nevertheless instructive about the faith and life of peoples in the region. In the fanatic Red Fox, the author gives us a picture of religion that, although aware of the exploitation, cannot transcend itself. It is often a part of the violence made all the more explosive because of the feuds between the families of the region. Fox's religious sentiments seem subject to superstition, widespread in the region. The settlement school, so important to the Christian mission impulse of easterners, does provide some alternate perspective and lifestyle to persons like June Tolliver. The missionaries are unable to sense how they have been co-opted by developers who exploit the region. The New Yorkers who come into the region for its resources do not recognize, at least in this novel, what injustices they cause to the land and people that they exploit for their own wealth and comfort. Hale does not have much faith, except for inspiration that he receives from June and her steady commitment to her place and people. So while Fox is very much aware of aspects of religious faith and life, they do not seem to help troubled Appalachia in his story, as they did the people in Murfree's story.

With regard to Fox's take on the heredity or environment debate, the conclusions are mixed. To be sure, June seems to be transformed as her environment is changed and she becomes a refined young woman. At the same time, Hale, an outsider to the mountains and supposedly with the "best" of genes, takes on some of the characteristics of the roughnecks and ruffians on whom he attempts to impose law and order. Fox does not explain why refined outsiders, such as Hale and the author's own relatives, seem to have lost all consciousness and conscience about what they were doing to the environment in this region. Therefore, they turned a place of great beauty into desolation, no good for anyone's body or soul. But in the end, June and Hale choose to identify with the people and land of the lonesome pine.

THE NEEDLE'S EYE

Arthur Train ( 1865-1945) was not an Appalachian. He was a Bostonian and a practicing lawyer in New York when he wrote and published The Needle's Eye (1924). He was already enormously popular for writing stories of Ephraim Tutt, an idealistic lawyer who combined the virtues of Robin Hood, Uncle Sam, Abe Lincoln, and Puck. Train had no clear religious affiliation, but he did have an active conscience and was concerned about the relationship between the law and justice. His hero, Tutt, remembered most for tutt-tutting, tutt-tutted for just causes despite the limits of the law. In good conscience, Train wrote about Appalachia through The Needle's Eye, a novel about the genes and environment of absentee landowners and about an internal colony in America's growing global economy after World War I.

The main setting for this novel is not in Appalachia. It is set in New York City, in the boardrooms and homes of the corporations, banks, and families that own and control West Virginia's coal mines, from which they extract their wealth and well-being. The story takes place in the early years of the twentieth century and climaxes during the mine wars of the 1920s. Train focuses on the Graham family. Thornton Graham, the head of the family banking firm and the Mid-West Coal Company of West Virginia, is a paternalistic businessman who believes he is doing right by his working men. He opposes moves toward democratization and unionization of the work force, particularly demands for a closed shop. He dies. Then two main characters emerge. John, his son, who takes over the family firm, and Rhoda McLance, his close friend, who is also from a wealthy family with interests in West Virginia. Rhoda is alienated from her father, and has joined radical socialists to challenge her father and other "malefactors of great wealth," as they are labeled in the novel. Because of Rhoda, John also adopts socialist leanings, and is deeply disturbed by his inherited family wealth. Rhoda claims that Jesus was a Socialist and sensitizes John's conscience by calling attention to Jesus' encounter with the rich young ruler. John contemplates this encounter as he attempts to deal with new responsibilities as a wealthy young man and as head of the Mid-West Coal Company.