Helpful Score: 1
It was good, a neat story about life during the depression.
Well written story that keeps moving along making it impossible to put down. Melinda is eighteen when her dad dies and she volunteers for the Red Cross. Her journey begins taking care of those in the coal mines of the Cumberland Gap and proceeds to Spain, Italy and back to America. She marries, adopts two children because they need her and lives a life of putting everyone ahead of herself.
"One woman's extraordinary journey through the maelstrom of the 20th century... As a young southern belle of shallow longings in the early 1930s, Melinda Kregg leads a safe life built on guilt-edged securities in coal. When her mother suggested she volunteer for 'something nice,' Melinda willfully signs on with the Red Cross in Harlan County, Kentucky. There her conscience is stirred by the bloody coal-mining strike, but when she aids the black-listed miners, she is branded a Communist and dismissed from the Red Cross. Her innocence shattered, Melinda moves to other battlefields, tending to the social wounded wherever it may be - the Spanish Civil War, World War II London, the civil-rights torn South."
