Coal Camp Days: A Boy's Remembrance
by Ricardo L. Garcia

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Book Reviews of Coal Camp Days: A Boy's Remembrance

Book Review: A must-have for readers of northern NM literature
Summary: 5 Stars

Following Matias, the fictionalized protagonist, Garcia weaves a tapestry of stories that blend local customs, traditions, and dialects as both the young boy and diverse community he lives in, grow together during one of the most chaotic times of United States history.

The texts readability is an outreach from Garcias easy going style, attention to detail and ability to capture the moment in a language that is at once focused, yet relaxedcolloquial even. The text also serves as an ethnohistory of a specific time and group, and is an uplifting recollection about a simpler time when people of distinct backgrounds learn to live, love and face sorrow together.

Summary of Coal Camp Days: A Boy's Remembrance

The coalfields of northern New Mexico are the setting for the remembrances of six-year-old Matias Montaño, a fictionalized version of the author's life in the last years of World War II. García writes about ordinary coal-mining people as they struggle to make a living and raise families, and about their heroism, joy for living, and their belief in the value of education, hard work, and the American Dream.

For Matias, his brothers, friends, and the adults in their lives, the poor living conditions did not interfere with their adventures and activities, which included collecting scrap iron, picking chokecherries, tracking deer, hunting rattlesnakes, and riding hand cars down the railroad tracks. This book presents a fresh and richly textured view of life in a mining town from the Hispanic viewpoint but includes folklore and stories told by the town's many other ethnic groups, among them Italian, Slavic, and Greek immigrants and African Americans, all working together in support of the war effort and in search of better lives.

Hispanic & Latino Books

• Books > Subjects > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National
• History > World
• Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Family Saga
• Historical
• United States > Hispanic